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THE DIVINITY 
OF CHRIST 



BT 



EDWARD SCRIBNER AMES, Ph. D' 

MINISTEB OF THE HYDE PARK CHURCH OF DISCIPLES 
OF CHRIST; ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY 
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO; AUTHOR OF THE 
PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE (HOUGHTOH 
MIFFLIN COMPANY). 



Zbc Bctbani? press 

Zbc TOcw Cbriatian Centuri^ Company 

700 B. ffoctletb Street, 
Cbicado 






CJOPYBIGHT 1911 

Thk Nkw Chbistiak Centuby Company. 



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foreword 

The sermons which are here brought 
together were preached and separately 
printed at different times during the past 
seven years. Requests for them continue 
and have been the occasion of the appear- 
ance of this little book. Interest in the 
central theme is increasing as the con- 
structive tendency of modern thought is 
more widely understood. It is earnestly 
hoped that these pages may contribute in 
some slight measure to the deepening of 
religious faith in the presence of the full- 
est knowledge. 

The sympathetic understanding and 
generous co-operation of the local church 
through the eleven years of the present 
pastorate are evidenced by the fact that 
the church authorizes this publication. 
Edward Scribner Ames. 

Hyde Park, Chicago. 

November, 1911. 



Contents. 



Ohaptkr. Pagk. 

I. The Divinity of Chbist - - - 3 

II. An Empirical View of Jesus - - 23 

III. Why I Am Not a Unitarian - - 39 

IV. The Friendship of Jesus - - - 61 
V. The Reincarnation of Christ - - 79 

VI. Two or Three and Christ - - - 101 



"I myself;" Jesus answered, ''am the Way, the 
Truth, and the Life; no one ever comes to the 
Father except through me. If you had recognized 
me, you would have known my Father too; for 
the future, however, you will recognize him; in- 
deed you have already seen him." 

''Master, show us' the Father," said Philip, 
"and we shall be satisfied." 

'•Have I been all this time among you," Jesua 
said, "and yet you, Philip, have not recognized 
me? Those who have seen me have seen the 
Father, so how can you still say, 'Show us the 
Father?' Do you not believe that I am in union 
with the Father, and the Father with me? The 
truths which I tell you are not given on my own 
authority; but it is the Father who being always 
in union with me, is doing these things himself. 
Believe me," he said to them all, "when I say 
that I am in union with the Father and the 
Father with me, or else believe me on account of 
these very things which vou see." 

St. John 14:6-11. 



tHE DIVINITY OF CHRIST. 

'^Christianity is founded upon Jesus 
Christ." It sprang from his personality, de 
rived its vital conception from his words 
and its inspiration from his vision and 
example. The church arose as the com- 
pany of those who were won to him, to 
his ideals and to his way of service toward 
God and man. The test of loyalty was 
the disposition to follow him in doing the 
will of the Father. That was what the 
word "belief" meant in New Testament 
times. Belief is conviction which controls 
action. Therefore to believe in Jesus 
meant to imitate his example, to enter into 
sympathy with his purposes, to co-operate 
with him in establishing the kingdom of 
heaven on earth. The confession that 
Jesus is the Son of God was the favorite 
formula for the expression of this prac- 
tical faith in him. It signified that his 
disciples were convinced that he knew and 
declared God's will, that his supreme am- 



4 THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 

bition was to do it, and that he could be 
trusted to lead them in the divine life. 
His own appeal was ever to the heart and 
will of his hearers. He sought to enlist 
them for active service. ^'Follow me" — 
not praise me, nor patronize me, nor wor- 
ship me — was the form of his call, and its 
illustration was the parable of the Good 
Samaritan, together with many other para- 
bles and deeds bearing the same object- 
lesson of love and devotion. His one un- 
conditional test of discipleship was the 
fashioning of daily life, in word and act; 
by the spiritual standards of the kingdom 
of heaven. This test was expressed in 
many ways. It involved the control of 
appetite, the subordination of pleasure, 
the denial of the lower self in all its forms. 
To make that clear Jesus said, "Except a 
man take up his cross and follow me, he 
cannot be my disciple." If the hand or 
eye hindered the attainment of the highest 
life, it must be cut off or plucked out. The 
cunning and sensuous things must be sub- 
jected to the serious, earnest work of 
righteousness. With reference to other 



THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 5 

problems of conduct this one test of dis- 
cipleship became a call to repent, to be 
faithful, to bear fruit, or to love one's 
neighbor. Always it was practical, in- 
tended to fashion character, to give the 
right bent to the will. 

Belief in Jesus, in his sonship to God, 
was just another form of this test. He 
explicitly declared that the ascription to 
him of mere titles meant nothing except 
as they who employed them were trying 
to live the kind of life he enjoined. He 
preferred to be acknowledged by deeds 
rather than by words. Evidently there 
were people in his day who never under- 
stood this. They repeated their creed, 
they declared their belief in his Lordship 
and yet were disowned by Christ. It is 
not recorded that they were viciously bad 
men. They probably were very respect- 
able, judging by the social and religious 
standards of their time, but they did not 
take to heart the teaching of Christ, nor 
make it the inspiring, energizing law of 
their lives. No one so excited the burn- 
ing indignation of Jesus as these pious, 



S fHB DlVimrt OF OHBlSf 

easy-going religionists, who professed 
faith in him with their lips, but itt theit 
daily lives denied him by their Gdmplacent 
self-righteousness and by their self-de- 
ceiving orthodoxy. In a Vivid, imagiiia- 
tive picture Jesus portrayed theni. Sdmef 
of them were preachers. "Have we not 
prophesied in thy name?" they said. Some 
of them were even workers of miracles. 
"Have we not in thy name east out devils? 
and in thy name done many wonderful 
works?" they said. To them all Jesus re- 
plied, "I never knew you, depart from me 
ye that work iniquity. Not everyone that 
saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into 
the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth 
the will of my Father which is in heaven." 
In the same spirit the apostles of Christ 
were always anxious concerning the daily 
lives of their converts. Their loyalty to 
the Master was measured by their so> 
briety, chastity, honesty, industry in busi- 
ness, liberality toward the poor, arid in the 
support of the gospel. Christ was con- 
fessed or denied in the relations of hus- 
band and wife, of parent and child, df 



TBE DIVINITY OF CHRIST T 

master and servant, of friend and neigh- 
bor. By the whole message arid exampk 
of Jesus and his apostles, it is made em- 
phatic that faith is shown more by the 
care of the hungry and thirsty, of the 
stranger and naked, of the sick and impris- 
oned, — that is by a vigorous and abundant 
life of righteousness, than by any verbal 
declaration of his divinity. What a man 
really thinks about Christ is therefore to 
be judged by his daily life, its tone and 
ideals, its degree of generous, whole- 
hearted devotion to the things which are 
true and pure and lovely and of good re~ 
port. 

The loss or obscuration of this active, 
practical element in the conception of 
Christian faith has led to radically erro- 
neous estimates of the place of the doc- 
trine of the divinity of Christ. Frequently 
more concern is shown regarding the theo- 
reticsil correctness of a man's ideas about 
Christ than about the actual influence of 
Christ in the man's life. It is as though 
one asserted that the main condition ol 
bodily life were to understand the nature 



• THB DIVINITY OF CHRIST 

of food rather than to eat it. To be sure 
men are constantly investigating their 
food, as well as their religious faith, and 
they are justified in doing both with all 
the aid which experience and science can 
afford ; but the specialists in dietetics, un- 
like the theologians, have never yet at- 
tempted to withhold all food from those 
who would not or could not accept their 
definitions of it. The thing of first im- 
portance in religion is to endeavor to live 
by the truth and the love which Jesus 
Christ displayed. By means of the deep- 
ening experience which that involves one 
grows in knowledge and appreciation of 
Christ himself. How clearly his own 
words declare this practical and volitional 
character of his religion when in answer 
to those who were raising this very ques- 
tion as to his nature he said : "If any one 
has the will to do God's will, he will find 
out whether my teaching is from God, or 
whether I speak on my own authority." 

The peculiar position and emphasis 
which the doctrine of the divinity of Christ 
has come to have in the whole body of 



TEE DIVINITY OF CHRI8T B 

church teaching and practice has not al- 
ways made obvious what is the central 
message of Jesus, namely, the Fatherhood 
of God. Another method of approach 
might succeed better. Theologians are 
constantly plying us with sermons and ar- 
guments to prove the divinity of Christ, 
but the great aim of Jesus was to bring 
men to believe in the justice and mercy 
and love of God the heavenly Father. It 
is common to assume the nature of God, 
and then to show that Jesus Christ is his 
son, but the opposite course may be more 
historical, more scriptural and more rea- 
sonable. The life of Christ is the given 
factor in the equation, and from it is to be 
discovered what kind of a being God is. 
To reverse this statement of the problem 
fills it with all kinds of impossibilities, for 
then we demand an explanation of the 
nature of Christ in terms of the being of 
God, when it is the fundamental principle 
of the Christian religion that the revela- 
. tion of God is given through Jesus Christ 
himself. It is as though a traveler were 
to come to us from a remote and ideal 



10 THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 

country, and in many ways teach us about 
its people, its laws and his father, the king, 
presenting himself all the while as the 
best proof and illustration of the things 
he told. "And," he might say, "those who 
believe me and observe my precepts shall 
surely enter that land some day in great 
joy and victory ; and moreover, during all 
their days here they shall be wiser and 
better, more useful and more contented 
than by any other way of life." Then sup- 
pose that, instead of using his words and 
his beautiful life to fill out in our thought 
the ever growing conception of that coun- 
try and its king, and instead of seeking to 
live in the light of that vision, we should 
turn about and very ingeniously busy our- 
selves trying to prove whether the mes- 
senger really was a true representative of 
the land from which he came and in very 
fact the son of the king himself. 

In other words the reasonable and the 
satisfying thing is to believe, and to act 
upon the belief, that God is as good and 
as gracious as Jesus Christ. What a real 
and vital foundation that gives to our 



THI^ DIVINITY OF CHRIST 11 

faith in the world and in the cause of 
righteousness. Thinking men are in real- 
ity more troubled today about the charac- 
ter of God than they are about the nature 
of Jesus. Even Renan and Strauss and 
others who have been counted the enemies 
pf Christianity have paid the highest trib- 
utes to the moral character, the religious 
insight and the uplifting influence of 
Jesus. And in the end their whole con- 
tention ministers profoundly to faith in 
God and the world ; for if, as they assert, 
Jesus was a man, to be accounted for by 
the natural processes of his racial inheri- 
tance and education, sprung in every ele- 
misnt of his being from the bosom of the 
earth and from the air he breathed, then 
they have only infinitely enhanced what 
they call "nature'* by attributing to it the 
production of the personality which they 
admit he possessed. It is inspiring to be- 
lieve that those spiritual qualities belong 
to the world itself. To be convinced that 
the stars in their courses, and the tides of 
human history are guided by the samr 
love of the truth, the same tender concern 



12 THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 

for human souls and the same indignation 
against all forms of evil and injustice, as 
are found in the pure heart of Jesus — this 
is to possess the highest form of religious 
faith. It teaches patience in the long, 
fierce conflict with sin. It fills the falter- 
ing heart with courage. It compensates 
for the self-denial and humiliation which 
every man experiences in his pursuit of 
the true and the good. This conviction 
that the essential realities for the infinite, 
eternal God are what they were for Christ 
himself — ^what measureless strength it 
gives to him who consciously devotes him- 
self to the same ideals, to the service of 
his fellowman, and to the moral progress 
and illumination of the race. One who 
gains this insight into the spiritual qual- 
ity of the world is armored against all 
temptations of mere sensuous pleasure, or 
v/ealth or popular applause, and against 
all reverses of fortune. He goes eagerly 
to his daily task, whatever it may be, if 
he feels that his purposes and methods 
make him a Co-worker together with God, 
the God who is truly the Father of Jesus 



THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 13 

Christ. 

Now it is important to realize how the 
nature of Christ may be used as the means 
for understanding God. No one would 
think of starting from the physical body 
of Jesus, and yet in the usual arguments 
for proving that Christ is divine, the phys- 
ical processes of conception and birth 
have great prominence. If Christ's son- 
ship to God rested upon these things, we 
would be led to think of God in terms of 
the bodily traits of Jesus. It is not many 
centuries since something like that was 
the prevalent idea of God. He was a great 
being, of gigantic form, seated on a huge 
throne up in the sky, ruling the universe 
after the manner of a mighty king. But 
Jesus himself expressly declared that Goi 
is Spirit, and his nearest disciple asserted 
that God is love. If therefore, the per- 
sonality of Christ is to be taken in any 
sense as the revelation of God, it must in 
all reason be the moral and spiritual na- 
ture of Jesus. The conspicuous quality 
of his character was love, and that may 
serve to illustrate how the life of God 



14 THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 

may be interpreted through Christ. 

Before the time of Jesus the term God 
signified for the mass of men a local or 
a national deity. The sympathies and in- 
terests of Jesus, however, extended far 
beyond his own race. He entered into 
the minds of men of other races too and 
spoke in a new way of ''the world" of 
men and women. Neither did he lack 
sympathy for any social class. The rich 
and poor were alike to him. He mingled 
freely with all sorts of men, sinners and 
menials, as well as the righteous and the 
great. More than this, he loved all these 
races and classes with a wonderful in- 
tensity. Among their sick and blind and 
deaf and crippled ones he moved with 
cheer and blessing. He seemed never an- 
noyed by their insistence nor resentful at 
their ingratitude and selfishness. His love 
even went out to those who stood in his 
way, opposed his plans, sought his life 
and at last crucified him like a common 
thief. It was in that dark hour of human 

sin and ignorance that the light of Christ's 
love shone out with revealing glory. 



THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 15 

There upon the cross they had erected he 
was sohcitous for his enemies, as well as 
for the gentle mother who had followed 
him all his days with yearning care. The 
world never really knew before what love 
was, and never has since produced a scene 
of equal power and charm over the human 
heart. In that hour it was first shown 
with convincing proof that love could 
abolish the hatred of races, the pride of 
social castes, the self-righteousness of vir- 
tue and overcome the bitterest enmities 
and cruelties. In that love of Christ men 
first began to realize the possibility of a 
universal love for the world on the part 
of an infinite God. If Jesus, a man of 
flesh and blood like us, could by an all- 
inclusive love rise above the distinction? 
and differences which exist between men, 
how surely must the Power which gave 
him being be no respecter of persons, but 
the tender Keeper of all the children of 
men. John, the beloved disciple, was 
quick to draw this inference. He had 
penetrated deep into the heart of Jesus. 
He had companied with the Master in 



16 THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 

trials, in temptations, in defeat, in the 
presence of the multitudes, and in the 
solitude of the mountains and through it 
all it was the enveloping love of Christ, a 
pillar of fire by night and a cloud of glory 
by day, which led him on. This love re- 
mained to John the most vivid memory 
of Jesus forty years after Calvary. It is 
the key-word of all his records of Christ, 
and it is the word through which he ex- 
plains the nature of God. ''God is love," 
he wrote, "and he that dwelleth in love 
dwelleth in God and God in him.'' 

It is this spiritual sonship of Jesus to 
God that is the really important thing. 
Mere physical sonship, however unique or 
miraculous, would not be the guarantee 
of a mind and will in harmony with God. 
It was the voluntary choice to do his 
Father's will which really proved Christ 
to be divine. Nothing but this inner self 
surrender of every lesser thing in order to 
give himself wholly to the purposes of the 
divine will, could surely establish his one- 
ness with God. And this claim to divinity 
squares itself with the profoundest con- 



THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 17 

ceptions of morality and religion. For in 
a world of truth and goodness, where the 
name of the Infinite signifies wisdom and 
love and holy will, any participation in 
the nature of God must involve the pres- 
ence of these supreme spiritual qualities. 
It is in this way that Jesus Christ is 
recognized as the Son of God, not by acci- 
dent, nor by the contravention of law, but 
by the perceptible and conscious unfolding 
within him of a spirit sublime enough to 
be the revelation of the spiritual nature of 
the world. This view gains inspiring con- 
firmation in the fact that the possession of 
the divine life is not limited to himself 
alone, but is the privilege of all men who 
will enter upon the Christ-like life them- 
selves. "As many as are led by the Spirit 
of God, they are the sons of God." *'Every 
one that loveth is born of God.'' In the 
sermon on the Mount, Jesus exhorted his 
hearers to love and to do good that they 
might be the children of their Father in 
heaven. In this conception the world pre- 
sents itself as a spiritual reality of law 
and order where Christ is exalted by 



18 THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 

nothing arbitrary or capricious, but only 
by the operation of those eternal forces of 
righteousness and love, through which he 
seeks to redeem all mankind. 

The familiar arguments for the divinity 
of Christ do not produce the same convic- 
tion they once did. This is not due to loss 
of appreciation of Christ, for that has 
grown marvelously in recent years. The 
inadequacy of those arguments is ac- 
counted for by the fact that they belong 
to a different type of thought. They are 
essentially scholastic and deductive, rather 
than experimental and ethical. For in- 
stance, the doctrine of the Trinity rests 
upon certain metaphysical conceptions of 
substance and essence, of causation and 
pure being, terms which have only histori- 
cal significance for modern minds. The 
present study of Jesus is psychological 
and sociological. The inquiry now is not 
so much how he came into being, but 
what was his actual life among men, what 
were his thoughts, his feelings, his voli- 
tions. Evidences of his nature are sought 
less among the prophets who preceded 



THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 19 

him, and more among the saints who have 
followed him. Things are judged today 
by their effects rather than by their 
causes. It is what a man does that de- 
termines his value, just as it is the action 
of electricity rather than the means by 
which it is produced that indicates its 
nature. The words and deeds and in- 
fluence of Christ are therefore the subjects 
of greatest interest in the church today. 
These are actual facts of history and are 
accessible to the strictest scientific inves- 
tigation. They stand upon their own truth 
and moral power. Never were his say- 
ings and his work submitted to such close 
scrutiny as at the present time. Friends 
and foes have contended over them point 
by point, and yet they remain before the 
sharpest criticism, the highest moral 
teaching and the- finest examples of spirit- 
ual faith and courage which the world has 
seen. They are therefore norms and stan- 
dards for our ideas of God, of duty and of 
destiny. Happy are we to have had that 
marvelous man born as one of our own 
race, bone of our bone and flesh of our 



20 TEE DITIXITY OF CHRIST 

flesh ; and happy indeed are we if we be- 
lieve that God is his Father, full of the 
same grace and truth. To this historical 
Jesus, as to the fountain head, men have 
returned and will return, generation after 
generation, for ideals, for comfort and for 
strength. The w^aters of that fountain 
never waste away nor lose their power. 
They have gathered volume as they have 
run through the centuries until the Chris- 
tian religion has become a mighty river 
of life on whose shores are trees of knowl- 
edge and of manifold blessing for the 
healing of the nations. And whatever 
imperfections his church has displayed in 
her worldly search for power, in her per- 
secutions of dissenters, or in the unholy 
wars of her sects, it must ever be re- 
membered that the most relentless critic 
of the church is its Founder himself. His 
warnings and his appeals are ever in the 
ears and before the eyes of his disciples. 
His spirit broods over his church, urgmg 
it to simpler and more vital faith, to more 
reliance upon the naked truth in every 
form, and to more complete devotion to 



THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 21 

the care of human souls. 

Is Christ then, divine? As well ask 
whether Shakespeare is a playwright or 
Kant a philosopher or Newton a mathe- 
matician. These men themselves set the 
standards by which their work is judged. 
And so of Jesus. He is divine if any be- 
ing in all the known universe of human 
history is divine, for he himself has been 
the bearer of divine life to the world. 
With increasing faith, based upon grow- 
ing evidence from his words, his character 
and his influence, the Christian of today 
can face all the world of knowledge and 
experience, and declare concerning Jesus 
Christ, He that hath seen him hath seen 
the Father. 

'Tf Jesus Christ is a man — 
And only a man, I say 
That of all mankind I cleave to him. 
And to him will I cleave alway. 

"If Jesus Christ is a God, — 
And the only God, — I swear 
I will follow Him through heaven and hell, 
The earth, the sea, and the air." 



Philip findetli Nathaniel, and saith unto him, 
"We have found him, of whom Moses in the 
law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of 
Nazareth, the son of Joseph." 

And Nathaniel said unto him, "Can there any- 
good thing come out of Nazareth?" Philip saith 
unto him, "Come and see." 

m, John 1:45-46. 



Beware of false prophets, which come to you 
in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are raven- 
ing wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. 
Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of this- 
tles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth 
good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth 
evil fruit. Matthew 7:15-17. 



II. 

THE EMPIRICAL VIEW OF JESUS 

I can only suggest in a very summary 
way, here, what the empirical view of 
Jesus seems to me to involve. In the 
first place it means that the biblical rec- 
ords and the world-view in which he is 
presented to us are to be taken critically. 
One often hears arguments about the 
person and work of Christ in which the 
major premise is uncritically assumed. 
That major premise is to the effect that 
an infallible revelation was given through 
the inspired prophets of Israel, and 
through the writers of the New Testa- 
ment. Then the only problem is to find 
out what the place of Christ is in this 
biblical cosmology. 

A still more powerful factor implicit 
in the major premise of the theo- 
logians has been the Greek influence 
which was already at work in the 
New Testament writers and became domi- 
nant in the third and fourth centuries. 



24 THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 

Here enters the logos notion and witE it 
many metaphysical implications. Taking 
these and related doctrines for granted, 
it is easy to deduce scriptural and seem- 
ingly reasonable conclusions respecting 
the unique character of Jesus and his 
place in the redemptive system of this 
world-scheme. But all this biblical tradi- 
tion and Greek influence are being placed 
in an ample historical perspective today, 
affording an interesting illustration of the 
way in which custom and habit come to 
be accepted as divine revelations and final 
truths. Under a critical, comparative ex- 
amination, the development of the na- 
tional life of the Jews, with their folk lore 
and ritual, and the scientific, speculative 
systems of the Greeks, are not funda- 
mentally different — though more impor- 
tant for us — from the development of the 
ceremonials of the Chinese or of the Aus- 
tralian or African Blacks. Indeed what 
happened to the conception of Christ in 
relation to the old Hebrew and Greek 
civilizations is constantly illustrated in 
missionary work in other countries. 



THE EMPIRICAL VIEW OF JESUS 25 

Everywhere the story of Jesus is apper- 
ceived by different races in terms of their 
history, their heroes and their cere- 
monials. 

The ritual of the Hebrews was fixed 
in their nomadic, pastoral period, and 
therefore Jesus became the Lamb of God, 
and by His Jewish adherents was re- 
garded as the great final sacrifice for the 
sin of the people. Miracles and wonders 
were familiar to the Hebrew mind, as to 
all primitive minds, and consequently this 
teacher and leader was accredited with 
miracles and wonders. It was commonly 
believed that the gods took the women of 
the human race for wives, and it was in- 
evitable that as Jesus came to be regarded 
as a great personage, this half divine, half 
human parentage should be ascribed to 
him also. That these miracles and this 
birth should still be regarded by informed 
men of the present day as actual, literal 
facts is striking evidence of how much 
of the primitive age of child wonder and 
savage credulity still survive in the world. 
The only reason one is under any obliga- 



26 THE DITISITY OF CHRIST 

tion to treat these things with some con- 
sideration is that they have involved the 
profoundest reverence and allegiance of 
many believers. They did help once per- 
haps to exalt Christ to a commanding 
place of leadership and spiritual power. 
But now they can only be accepted seri- 
ously for what they have meant in the 
past. They may still be serviceable in 
poetry and art and in various types of 
S}Tnbolism, but as literal matters of fact 
they should be put aside with other child- 
ish things. This critical, historical pro- 
cess is showing also that much of our 
accepted orthodoxy is due to the imposing 
influence of certain specific causes. Thus 
our notion of an infallible Bible arose in 
the seventeenth century and was directly 
occasioned by the need among Protes- 
tants for an offset to the infallible author- 
ity of Rome. It is highly amusing no\\' 
to see this seventeenth century point of 
view projected back to the writers of the 
New Testament themselves and supported 
by a few texts of scripture. In the same 
general manner Dante and Milton have 



THE EMPIRICAL VIEW OF JESUS 27 

furnished much authentic, first hand, i^ew 
Testament doctrine! They succeeded in 
filling the popular mind with vivid and 
compelling imagery for which the accom- 
modating poetic and figurative speech of 
the Bible afforded imposing, apostolic 
texts. 

Now it is my own conviction that the 
ordinary discussions of the divinity of 
Christ move blindly in the circles of such 
world-views developed in primitive myth- 
ology, in Greek metaphysical speculations, 
or, it may be, in some form of Darwinism 
in our own time. The very term "divin- 
ity" seems to force us to put Christ either 
on the side of the ancient gods or to insist 
that he must be merely human and only 
natural — using "human'' and "natural" in 
contrast to "divine," and therefore in a 
derogatory way. 

With this very meager generalization, 
it may be possible to indicate more posi- 
tively what the empirical view of Christ 
means. It seems to me that empiricism 
attaches no validity to the old dualism of 
the natural and supernatural, the human 



28 THE DiriyiTY OF CHRIST 

and the divine and that therefore we are 
not any longer concerned with the ''divin- 
ity" of Christ but rather with his goodness 

and his worth. 

Empirically, that is, in human experi- 
ence as we know it and are able to test 
it, we find that the distinctions between 
men are those of degree, of quality, and 
we apply a standard of values to men 
according to their intellectual, ethical and 
social functions. Men are great or small, 
wise or ignorant, good or bad in a sys- 
tem of experience which is urgent and 
practical. The old metaphysical concep- 
tions of personality with their vocabulary 
of indivisible substance and special en- 
dowments are passing away. Gods, as 
well as men, are subject to new tests — 
tests of an ethical sort. Have they good 
hearts, good wills, efficient minds? The 
outward pomp and glory of our earthly 
kings have departed, and we are also 
becoming indifferent to the tinsel of the 
heavenly world. We have little interest 
in the question whether a being with a 
double nature such as Christ is often 



THE EMPIRICAL VIEW OF JESUS 29 

represented, could suffer to death upon 
a Roman cross, but we are tremendously 
concerned as to whether men with" one 
nature like our own can intelligently and 
disinterestedly labor and serve for the 
welfare of our kind here and now. So 
much is this attitude controlling us, that 
the older conception of Christ, as a being 
with a uniquely superior endowment, re- 
pels us from him. If he only acted out on 
earth the part for which he had been 
coached in heaven, or if he did a man's 
task with a god's strength, or if he pos- 
sessed the equivalent of a magic key to 
unlock the plain, everyday difficulties 
which we meet barehanded, then he only 
makes our despair the deeper; for he is a 
constant reminder that we are mocked by 
a categorical imperative to perform duties 
too great for us, and to solve problems 
which to our reason are conundrums, for- 
ever dark to our natural thought by vir- 
tue of a double use of words. 

But on the other hand, if fie really was 
like us, born of two human parents, nur- 
tured by a good mother, schooled in the 



30 THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 

lore of his people, sensitive to its plaintive, 
minor note, responsive to the best of the 
prophetic ideals and the wisdom of the 
wise men; able to translate all this into 
the beatitudes and the story of the prod- 
igal son and the good Samaritan ; able also 
to actually practice genuine friendship 
with Zaccheus and the Samaritan woman 
and with Judas, and to forgive those who 
crucified him ; always believing in tho 
power of love and of his righteous cause ; 
then he makes our hearts burn within us, 
he draws us into his fellowship, he affords 
us courage and faith and redeems us from 
all sin and weakness. We can then find 
the inner word of his gospel for an en- 
lightened age, and can start, at least, on 
the way toward a new apologetic and a 
more powerful evangel. We can even use 
much of the old symbolism, for it is capa- 
ble of pointing to the living realities of 
our experience in comparison with which 
the old things suggested by that symbol- 
ism were mock-heroic and tawdry. I 
mean that the cross becomes symbolic of 
the pain of every earnest soul in the ac- 



TEE EMPIRICAL VIEW OF JESUS 31 

complishment of duty. The shed blood of 
Jesus is typical of the price men always 
pay for the right to think and to feel bet- 
ter things than the officials of the estab- 
lished order. That pathetic, bleeding fig- 
ure of Christ has come to represent for 
many of us not the weird magic of a dying 
god's power, but the redeeming quality 
of the mother's love, the patriot's devo- 
tion, the modern social worker's sacrifice 
for his fellows. It was natural that the 
ancient Jewish Christian should associate 
the blood of Christ with the blood of the 
Lamb upon the ancestral altar. It is 
equally natural and right for us to asso- 
ciate the blood of Christ with the blood 
of our great sufifering servant of his peo- 
ple, the martyred Abraham Lincoln. 

But it may be asked, What ontological 
significance has all this? What is the 
relation of Christ to the absolute, the 
world substance, to God? My answer 
cannot be categorical and yet it must be 
brief. I will confess bluntly that I have 
lost interest in ontological questions. I 
do, however, think it true that the per- 



32 THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 

sonality of Jesus reveals the heart of the 
world, in some such way as a beautiful 
oak tree makes known the nature of the 
soil it grows in. When we see the great 
oak, we may be sure at least that the soil 
its deep roots penetrate, is, with the other 
elements of rain and sun, equal to the pro- 
duction of that oak. The strength and 
beauty of that tree are expressions of 
nature's life. In the same way a noble 
man is proof that the world, the material, 
mental, spiritual world, has expressed it- 
self in him. He is a revelation of the 
world, of nature, of God. In this way, 
with his marvelous moral grandeur ana 
simplicity, Jesus Christ seems to me to be 
a revelation of the best things we know 
about the world. 

I realize that some defiant souls, 
rebelling against the impossible claims 
the past has made for Christ, deny 
that he ever lived at all. I am not 
one of those, but even if he never 
lived, we have yet to reckon with the ideal 
which his name suggests. And the ideal 
is a fact as stubborn and as obvious as a 



TEE EMPIRICAL VIEW OF JESUS 33 

flesh and blood existence. If the ideal of 
Christ has grown up either by imposture 
or by good intention or by an unconscious 
idealization of virtue, it is nevertheless 
among the finest things we possess, and is 
the product of our own life in any case. 
I think Christ is a reality of both sorts at 
once, actual and ideal. I think the evi- 
dence is sufficient that the man Jesus lived 
and also that his disciples and the church 
have idealized him. The idealizing pro- 
cess is evident in a casual survey of Chris- 
tian history and especially in Christian 
art. The early representations of Jesus 
show him as a shepherd carrying a lamb 
in his bosom. Then his features become 
more ascetic and heroic. His eyes seem 
withdrawn from his immediate surround- 
ings and take on the distant look of the 
mystic or the stern appearance of a com- 
mander or of a judge. All the light of 
human sympathy seems lost for a time, 
until in the modern schools he becomes 
once more, 

"The lover of women and men 
With a love that puts to shame 
All passions of human ken." 



34 THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 

In our day when the ideal of social serv- 
ice is coming to be supreme, we like to 
believe that we understand Jesus better 
than any other age has done, not except- 
ing his own. Therefore, we put great 
stress upon the social teachings of Jesus 
and he becomes to our imagination the 
chief figure in the forefront of our cru- 
sades against disease, bad tenements, 
heartless corporations, child-labor and the 
rest. Luckily we have abundant and 
familiar texts of scripture to support much 
of this idealization of Jesus and we have 
the sense at once of historicity anH of 
ideal values in our Christian message as 
no other age has had. 

But while it is true, as I see it, that we 
may generalize somewhat from this em- 
pirical fact of the historic and ideal Christ 
to the conclusion that the world has that 
degree of moral character in it, yet I feel 
much more certain of the following: 
namely, that Jesus Christ is a kind of 
pledge and promise of what other human 
beings may accomplish. The horticul- 
turists are proving that the existence of 



THE EMPIRICAL VIEW OF JE8U8 35 

one beautiful tree may become a pattern 
after which others may be developed. In 
some instances they have gained suffi- 
cient control of the process to reproduce 
the type in any numbers desired. Some- 
times, it is true, the individual variation 
proves to be a freak, sterile and inimitable. 
It is perhaps late enough in the history 
of Christianity to conclude that Christ is 
an imitable type, that his mind and v^ill 
are increasingly reproduced and that in 
the far future it may be possible that so- 
ciety, even in commerce and business, 
shall be controlled by his will and move 
in harmony with his purposes. This seems 
to me the supreme empirical test of Christ. 
Can his wisdom and his spirit be actual- 
ized in the world, in a society of men, in 
a heavenly kingdom of love and peace? 
If so, then Jesus will be shown to be not 
an abnormality, but a normal product in 
our world, and thereby our world itself 
will be demonstrated to be favorable, yes 
equal to the creation of a race of Christian 
men. 

It is important to realize that this sTate- 



36 THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 

ment transfers the problem from the realm 
of static things, the things of a hidden 
past and the alleged realities behind our 
experience, to dynamic things in the future 
and to the things implicit in our present 
experience. The old questions have been, 
did Christ live with God before the v^orld? 
Did he come forth from God? Is he the 
revelation of a God hidden behind the 
scenes? The new questions are, ''Will 
Christ live in the future? Will he bring 
a godlike life into the world for all men? 
Will he build God's kingdom before our 
eyes? More directly stated, Christ pre- 
sents a problem not for the intellect alone 
but primarily for the will. The question 
is not, what think ye of Christ? But 
what will you do about Christ's example 
and ideal of life? It is obligatory upon 
his followers yet to make the demonstra- 
tion which shall prove what Christ was. 
The saying of the writer of Hebrews con- 
cerning the ancient worthies may include 
Jesus too. He asserts that it was not 
possible "that they should reach their full 
perfection apart from us." If his disciples 



THE EMPIRICAL VIEW OF JESUS 37 

succeed in growing a race of men like him, 
then Jesus will be proved good. If they 
cannot do this, then he will be shown to 
be less than the best for our world where 
what we need is not sentimental right- 
eousness, but actual, tangible, testable, 
workable goodness. 

In accordance with what I have said, 
I am in favor of changing the wording of 
the Christian confession in order to re- 
store the simple, New Testament meaning 
of it. Instead of asking a candidate. Do 
you believe that Jesus Christ is the son of 
God? I would ask him. Are you willing 
to follow Jesus and to do the utmost 
within your power to establish his king- 
dom of love in the world? If he earnestly 
said, ''Yes," I would count him of that 
splendid company of the elect who venture 
their lives in a vast moral enterprise, one 
issue of which may be to prove whether 
there really is a God in the universe good 
enough to be called the Father of Jesus 
Christ. 



Neither knoweth any man the Father, save the 
Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal 
him. Matthew 11:27. 



My aim is that they may be encouraged, and 
be bound to one another by love, so attaining to 
the full blessedness of a firm and intelligent con- 
viction, and to a perfect knowledge of God's secret 
truths which are embodied in Christ. For all 
Gk>d's treasures of wisdom and knowledge are 
to be found stored up in Christ. 

Colossians 2:2. 



Dear friends, we are God's children now; what 
we shall be in the future has not yet been re- 
vealed. What we do know is that, if it should be 
revealed, we shall be like Christ. 

I John 3:2. 



III. 

WHY I AM NOT A UNITARIAN. 

The justification for such a personal 
statement as follows is that I have been 
asked why I am not a Unitarian. At 
times it is vigorously asserted that I am 
one anyhow. I do not deny being a ''lib- 
eral/' but I do reserve the privilege of 
stating what kind of a liberal I am. It 
is a bad fallacy to assert that all men who 
are not white are black. Likewise, it is 
altogether too easy and too narrow a view 
to conclude that because a man is not a 
perfectly orthodox Trinitarian evangelical 
Christian, he must therefore be a Unitar- 
ian. 

It is true there are many good things 
about Unitarianism. It is characterized 
by great intellectual culture, by philan- 
thropy and patriotism. There is also tol- 
erance in this fellowship for men of very 
different theological opinions. Even in its 
doctrinal contentions, which as a system 
I cannot accept, there are many admirable 
elements such as emphasis upon the hu- 



40 THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 

manity of Jesus and upon a reasonable 
method of biblical study. But as a whole 
the Unitarian movement is too negative, 
too much of a protest and therefore too in- 
dividualistic and too critical. It does not 
furnish the will the normal motives for 
action nor supply the emotions sufficient 
expression. It lacks great constructive, 
socializing tendencies, as is proved by its 
failure to gain adherents even among 
those classes which are rapidly freeing 
themselves from traditional doctrines and 
superstitions. 

On account of its critical spirit and the 
great divergence of doctrine among its 
representative men, it is not easy to formu- 
late a statement of views which all Uni- 
tarians would accept as typical. The po- 
sitions attributed to them here are those 
which have impressed me in reading their 
own writers and in observing the activi- 
ties of their ministers and churches. My 
reasons for not being a Unitarian do not, 
however, spring from my acceptance of 
the opposite doctrine of Trinitarianism. 
The study of the history of religion and 



WHY I AM NOT A UNITARIAN 41 

of the social sciences has developed a 
position different from both of these his- 
toric contentions. I have a very real en- 
thusiasm in quoting and adopting a char- 
acteristic saying of the early leaders of 
my own denomination: ''I am neither a 
Unitarian nor a Trinitarian but strive to 
be simply a Christian." The Disciples of 
Christ have employed this statement to 
indicate that they were not concerned with 
the theological questions suggested by 
these names, but v/ere seeking to devote 
themselves to practical Christianity in a 
direct and simple way. They were striv- 
ing to be guided only by the teachings of 
the New Testament in which neither of 
these party names appears. While this 
naive rejection of the contentions of both 
schools helped to make emphatic the im- 
mediate practical message of the Disci- 
ples, it now happily affords also freedom 
for the restatement of religious truth in 
terms of the new way of thinking peculiar 
to this age of scientific knowledge and 
social democracy. And this new way of 
thought is itself concerned primarily with 



42 THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 

practice more than with theory, with life 
more than with doctrine. It is known in 
the schools as empiricism, as pragmatism, 
as humanism. Those who in the sim- 
plicity of their minds suppose that this 
interpretation of life and religion is iden- 
tical with the older ''rationalism" or with 
''scepticism,'' thereby reveal their ignor- 
ance of it. And when they suppose it has 
been abundantly "answered" by the dis- 
cussions of the older orthodox theolog- 
ians they are opposing alchemy to chemis- 
try, and astrology to astronomy. 

My first reason, then, is that I do not 
accept the point of view which the very 
name Unitarian implies. It takes one horn 
of the ancient Greek dilemma that sub- 
stance must be either one or many, and 
insists that God is one. We are begin- 
ning to see that God, like any other re- 
ality, may be both one and many. In a 
sense, such mathematical categories are 
wholly inapplicable. It is a controversy 
which involves the nature of the divine 
"personality." For ages it has been dis- 
cussed in terms of substance, static, fixed, 



WHY I AM NOT A UNITARIAN 43 

immobile. But the whole matter appears 
in a different way when the modern, pre- 
vailing dynamic view is employed. Now, 
''personality'' is what it does. It appears 
under varying aspects from different 
angles and diverse relations. The hu- 
man personality itself must be described 
according to the point of view from which 
it is regarded. The doctrine that each 
person is in reality a congeries of many 
selves, or systems of habits, has the sanc- 
tion of the highest authority in psychol- 
ogy. Whatever unity personality possesses 
is the unity of a system, of an organism, 
and not the round and solid oneness of an 
inert mass. So long as one thinks of sub- 
stance mechanically there is necessarily 
a sharp opposition between an indivisible 
unity and that which is constituted of 
separable parts. But when substance is 
taken dynamically and organically — the 
only way in which we can longer think 
of personality — then it may be both one 
and many without contradiction, or in- 
consistency. With the acceptance of this 
modern conception of personality, we do 



44 THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 

not so much solve the old dilemma. We 
escape it. It becomes unreal. Therefore 
the contestants on both sides appear like 
the warriors in Valhalla, — waging a war- 
fare which is no longer significant in the 
present world. 

The second reason why I am not an ad- 
vocate of Unitarianism is that it presup- 
poses a dualism between the natural and 
the supernatural, placing God on the side 
of the supernatural and man, with all 
created beings, on the side of the natural. 
The most significant use of this distinc- 
tion is its application to the doctrine 
of Christ. The Unitarian theologians 
do not all agree in their conception 
of the distinction, but they all make 
it in some form. For Channing, who 
still believed in miracles, Jesus was 
not coequal with God. Later writers 
tend more to identify Jesus with the hu- 
man level, while attributing to him ex- 
ceptional genius and the distinction of 
being the world's greatest ethical teacher 
and example. Throughout the history of 
the Unitarian heresy, from the days of 



WHY I AM NOT A UNITARIAN 45 

Socinus, it has magnified the contrast be- 
tween the natural and supernatural, the 
human and the divine. Orthodox theolog- 
ians only differed from this position 
by adding that the natural is evil, and 
that human nature is burdened with 
original sin. Hence orthodoxy in- 
sisted upon the need of a supernat- 
ural redemption accomplished through 
a divinely unique Savior. Unitarians have 
not denied the contrast between the hu- 
man and the divine but have rejected the 
notion of the inherent sinfulness of man 
and consequently have blunted the doct- 
rine of redemption as a supernatural 
operation. Their teaching concerning man 
proceeds in the opposite direction from 
their doctrine concerning Christ, though 
both are more or less conscious protests 
against the views of the orthodox. They 
insist that Christ has been too much iden- 
tified with deity; man has been thought 
too sinful. But like the orthodox, the 
Unitarians were wrapt in the inexorable 
logic of a sharp contrast between the di- 
vine and the human. Christ was one or 



46 TEE DIVINITY OF CERI8T 

the other. The Trinitarians said, as di- 
vine, he could save sinful man. As hu- 
man, he would be impotent to effect the 
great salvation. The Unitarians said, as 
human, he could be an example and leader 
for man. As divine, he v^ould compromise 
the unity and self-sufficiency of God. The 
escape from this argument demands a 
fundamentally different view of the world 
than the disputants have held. They have 
both accepted the underlying dualism, and 
without questioning its validity, have 
chosen to champion opposite extremes. 
Now it is precisely this dualism which I 
do not accept, and when dualism is dis- 
carded the old contentions lose their 
meaning. I do not believe there is a 
natural and a supernatural order, a human 
and a divine sphere of being. Life is one: 
its differences are those of degree, of 
quality. Scientific evolution has contrib- 
uted endless confirmation to this idea. In 
its perspective, the various orders of crea- 
tion form a series, the continuity of which 
makes any seeming gaps only problems 
for further investigation under the gen- 



WHY I AM NOT A UNITARIAN 47 

erally established hypothesis. Man stands 
in organic relation to all the orders be- 
low him, possessing not only a physical 
structure fundamentally like that of the 
earthworm, but a sentiency as well. The 
intelligence of animals, like their anatomy, 
is strikingly human. Nothing below him 
is foreign to man^ nor is anything that is 
above him ! He shares the image and 
likeness of God. What religion has long 
asserted, psychology is now demonstrat- 
ing in reference to this likeness between 
God and man. For it is becoming clear 
that man cannot fashion any conception 
of God except by means of this likeness. 
If love, wisdom and work, as we know 
them, mean utterly different things when 
applied to God then our world is a mad- 
house, and God is only a greater illusion 
than ourselves. But when He is con- 
ceived in terms of this likeness, then He 
becomes great but not distant, wise but 
not unknowable, gracious but not without 
the quality of man's purest love and jus- 
tice. The most appealing passages of 
scripture employ this truth. God is the 



48 TEE DIViyiTY OF CHRIST 

Father of man ! Can man believe then 
that it is sacrilegious to assert that he is 
of the same nature with God? God is the 
Friend of man ! Can man have compan- 
ionship with any being lacking man's 
quality of heart and will? The issue is 
crucial in the deepest religious life of our 
time : either there exists the likeness or 
there is no God at all. 

Having squarely faced this oneness of 
man and God, one does not avow Uni- 
tarianism in accepting the humanity of 
Jesus, for to say that Christ was a man 
does not imply the denial of his divinity; 
and to assert his divinity is not to deny 
his human parentage. If the natural birth 
of the average man does not preclude his 
oneness with God, then neither does the 
natural birth of Jesus preclude his oneness 
with God. The greatness of Jesus must 
be conceived in ethical and spiritual terms, 
and therefore as something which is not 
guaranteed by a mysterious birth and is 
not lessened by an ordinary one. The 
truest features of the New Testament de- 
lineation of Jesus are those humanly true 



WHY I AM NOT A UNITARIAN 49 

and elemental experiences which are es- 
sential to the development of all genuine 
moral character. No overgrowth of ideal- 
ization or adoration in the first century 
was able to obliterate these traces of the 
spiritual biography of Jesus as it came by 
tradition from those who knew him per- 
sonally. The impression is still clear that 
he was tempted in all points as we are; 
that he attained great honor because he 
was humble ; that he was popular because 
he was kind to the poor; that he became 
the ''captain of our salvation/' because he 
suffered much and was faithful ; that he 
attained the full measure of sonship to 
God because he loved his fellow men and 
gave himself for them. 

Just here lies a third reason why I do 
not accept Unitarianism. Like Trinitar- 
ianism, it has employed an impossible 
method of interpreting Christ through 
God. It has been customary in both 
schools to assume that we must start with 
the person and character of God and then 
determine the nature of Christ. Nothing 
could be more unbiblical, unchristian, or 



50 TEE DIVINITY OF CERIST 

unscientific. That is like taking the X of 
an algebraic equation to determine the 
given factors. In the Christian system, 
Christ and human experience are the given 
factors and God is the X. The contend- 
ing disputants have started with the un- 
known quantity and have reached differ* 
ent conclusions about the given realities. 
One said the given realities equal X, and 
the other said they equal X minus. What 
is there in common with either procedure 
when one takes the given factors and by 
means of them reaches a conclusion con- 
cerning the nature of X? 

The latter is the method of the empirical 
science of our day which is remaking our 
world of thought and faith. Empiricism 
starts with facts, with tangible experi- 
ences, and cautiously builds upon them. 
It has great respect for reality, for his- 
tory, for criticized and classified knowledge. 
If religion is to be vital and satisfying in 
this new age, it must also deal with facts 
of actual experience, discarding supersti- 
tions, miracles and magic. The facts of 
the Christian religion center in the moral 



WHY I AM NOT A UNITARIAN 51 

character and teaching of Jesus. The 
Christian conception of God is of neces- 
sity a generalization based upon these 
facts, and upon the accumulating experi- 
ence of the race as affected by these facts 
throughout a long history. The life and 
personality of Christ are vivid and power- 
ful realities. His words, ideals and sacri- 
ficial devotion live intimately and pro- 
ductively in the spiritual depths of man- 
kind. They are the avenues through 
which we behold our God. "He that 
seeth me seeth him that sent me." Christ 
"is the image of the invisible God," not 
because this statement occurs in a verse 
of scripture, but because in making our 
estimate of God we are compelled by the 
nature of our minds to employ the best 
characters we know. The whole discus- 
sion about the divinity of Christ is usually 
vitiated by the fallacy of assuming cer- 
tainty with reference to God, and then 
arguing whether Christ is of the same 
nature, whereas all we can legitimately 
do is to begin with the warm, blood-red 
spirit of Jesus Christ and ask ourselves 



52 THE DIYIXITY OF CHRIST 

v/hether the heart of God is like that. 

The significant thing finally is not 
so much whether Christ is divine, as 
whether God is Christlike ! And the 
only way to determine this is by ask- 
ing whether Christ is an exception 
or a normal product in the life of 
the world. If other lives like his are 
possible; if the social order is capable 
of incarnating his spirit ; if a kingdom of 
Christlike men and women can be built in 
the world ; then we may believe that the 
heart of the w^orld beats true to the heart 
of Christ, and that God — the inmost Soul 
of all — is like the soul of Christ. This is 
the crux. ]\Ien are not cynical about 
Christ. They do not doubt his goodness. 
They want their children to know him 
and they would delight to see his spirit 
rule the world. There is little if any 
serious dissent from his ideals. But there 
is much doubt whether his teachings are 
practicable; whether his unselfishness, 
meekness, and idealism are capable of 
realization in a universe where power and 
cunning seem supreme. And unless they 



WHY I AM NOT A UNITARIAN 53 

are possible of attainment there would 
seem to be only tragic mockery in things 
and our experience could furnish no evi- 
dence that there is a God worthy to be 
called the Father of Jesus Christ. What 
is needed to create faith in the soul of the 
modern man is evidence that Christianity 
is fitted to the task of creating a better 
moral order, a juster social system. This 
practical achievement would demonstrate 
the quality of the world we live in and 
relieve us of the present difficult task of 
proving the infinite goodness of God in 
the face of a seemingly very bad world. 

One further reason why I am not a 
Unitarian is that religion, like all our life, 
is so much a matter of appreciation and 
volition and so little an affair of the in- 
tellect. It is being discovered that the 
great religions of the race are not and can- 
not be primarily matters of the intellect. 
Religion lives in the realm of the prac- 
tical life, in the midst of the struggle for 
existence. It needs the correcting and 
guiding light of reason, but it does not 
spring from reason nor depend upon it 



54 TEE DIVINITY OF CERI8T 

any more than do the marriage customs 
of the race. Unitarianism was formed and 
given its bent before the social aspect of 
man's life was understood, and there are 
inherent limitations in the individualism 
and rationalism of the movement which 
are the survivals of those formative in- 
fluences. 

On this account it never fully under- 
stood or appreciated the real strength of 
the orthodox communions. It was always 
inclined to view the latter as if they were 
founded upon their creeds. All members 
of orthodox churches were judged as if 
they were expected to understand these 
creeds and either be able to defend them 
or candid enough to renounce them. But 
the great evangelical denominations are 
not held together by their logic. They 
are great brotherhoods, fellowships, com- 
munions. These very words signify their 
nature. The bonds which unite them are 
powerful sentiments of affection and duty ; 
great moral ideals embodied in their lead- 
ers and in their institutional life ; great 
unifying activities of benevolence and mis- 



WHY I AM NOT A UNITARIAN 55 

sionary zeal. It is with all the life of 
religion much as it is with the hymns and 
the ritual of the churches; it is the emo- 
tional appeal and the awakening of won- 
derful moods which make them effective. 
Such hymns and rites are themselves the 
product of the heart in moments of in- 
tense feeling when the tremendous drama 
of salvation is vividly conceived for the 
individual or the race. They are set deep 
in the customs and habitual experiences of 
the people. They were not consciously 
and deliberately instituted, and they do 
not yield quickly to. criticism or opposi- 
tion. If their roots did not go deeper 
than the clear judgments of the mind, 
they would perhaps be more amenable to 
reason but they would also be less signifi- 
cant. 

In some such way the Unitarians have 
misunderstood much of the orthodox at- 
titude toward Christ. He was felt by the 
early church to have an official and cor- 
porate significance with reference to the 
whole race. The sense of solidarity, so 
intense in the Jewish people, naturally 



56 TEE DIVINITY OF CERIST 

dominated the Christian community. 
Christ became the expression of this so- 
cial unity. Lo3^alty to him in a national 
and cosmic sense was expressed in the 
doctrines of his pre-existence, virgin birth 
and miraculous deeds. The same ten- 
dency imputed magical efficacy to his 
death and to his blood. Such supernat- 
ural qualities were universally ascribed 
to the heroes of the early ages of the race. 
They were evidences of loyalty, of affec- 
tion, of reverence. And the more elab- 
orate doctrines which came with the later 
history of the church were still occasioned 
and permeated by this deep rooted affec- 
tion and devotion to the Head of the 
church. 

There has also been in the individual 
Christian consciousness a parallel develop- 
ment of the same emotional and practical 
character. Christian duty and responsi- 
bility have grown up as the sense of liv- 
ing communion between Christ and his 
followers. Under the influence of these 
prevalent conceptions the sinner is led in- 
to most vivid experiences in which he has 



WHY I AM NOT A UNITARIAN 57 

visions of Christ and feels certain of the 
divine presence. Now it has not been 
sufficiently recognized that psychological- 
ly such a living companionship is real and 
invaluable. Christ lives in the Christian's 
experience as vitally as if he walked by 
our side. We get comfort, inspiration 
and guidance through him. To deny this 
is to deny obvious facts of experience. 
The denial is intended, doubtless, to apply 
only to the idea that Christ literally lives 
in some transcendental existence and yet 
visits men in strange and unaccountable 
ways. But in criticizing this transcen- 
dental view the difficulty has been to al- 
low proper value and reality to the psy- 
chical and spiritual experiences them- 
selves. It is the old warfare between the 
letter and the spirit, between literalism 
and symbolism. When the mental pro- 
cesses involved in fellowship with Christ 
are better understood they will appear 
both more natural and more significant. 

What Christ may mean to one, quite 
aside from any unwarranted mysticism, 
is illustrated in the following incident 



58 THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 

told me recently by a friend who has 
grown away from the traditional concep- 
tions of Christianity. During a severe 
illness she was cared for in a Catholic 
hospital. Above her bed hung a crucifix. 
In her weakness and pain and uncertain- 
ty of life her eyes rested upon the an- 
guished face and bleeding form of the 
Christ. She was surprised at herself that 
she did not turn away in a kind of horror 
of it all after the manner of her sophisti- 
cated moods. But instead she continued 
to look upon the face and form, and the 
lips seemed to speak to her heart saying 
very simply, "I have suffered too." And 
in that word was a great comfort. 

There is ever this deep and elemental 
something in the crucified Christ which 
makes him live and speak to our hearts. 
He greets us with unexpected appeals. 
He opens new life before us. He brings 
comfort and inspiration. He bears away, 
as it were, the burdens of our sin and 
makes us whole again. He becomes a 
living presence, obliterating the centuries 
and all outward circumstances by the 



WHY I AM NOT A UNITARIAN 59 

energy of his deathless love. It is this 
sense of vital relation with Christ wlucn 
a recent writer holds to be the distinguish- 
ing essential of orthodox churches. He 
says, ''Here, then, is clearly defined the 
barrier which separates Unitarians from 
Christians of other denominations. These 
have or believe they have vital personal 
relations with Jesus Christ, who is in the 
world revealing the Father, and through 
whom they have access to the Father and 
receive his life."* 

The personality of Christ is to these 
churches a fusing, organizing, impelling 
power. Through it they lay hold of the 
consciences of men with a firm grip, and 
they present to the imagination a definite 
image of divine compassion and sustain- 
ing companionship. This personality 
stirs the emotions and stimulates the will 
as statements of fact and logic cannot do. 
The strength of the older churches lies in 
this warmth and depth of the social life, 
organized in terms of the personality of 



*The Congregationalist, November 13, 1009. 



60 THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 

Christ and directed to the fulfillment of 
the highest ideals as the expressions of 
his gracious will. But this religious sym- 
bolism of Christianity is not dependent 
upon the theological traditions of the past 
and in a freed and exalted form may yet 
become the language of that religion of 
the spirit which the new science and the 
new democracy are creating. 



Faithful are the wounds of a friend. 

Ointment and perfume rejoice the heart: 
So doth the sweetness of a man's friend that 
Cometh of hearty counsel. 

Thine own friend and thv father's friend, for- 
sake not. 

Iron sharpeneth iron: 

So a man sharpeneth the countenance of his 
friend. 

A friend loveth at all times, 

And is born as a brother for adversity. 

There is a friend that sticketh closer than a 
brother. Proverbs. 

Greater love hath no man than this, that a 
man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are 
my friends, if ye do the things which I com- 
mand you. Xo longer do I call you servants: 
for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth; 
but I have called you friends, for all things that 
I heard from my Father I have made known unto 
vou. ' St. John 15:13, 14. 51. 



IV. 
THE FRIENDSHIP OF JESUS. 

A notable characteristic of modern re- 
ligious thought is the growing apprecia- 
tion of the naturalness of Jesus. More 
and more he emerges from the mysterious 
half-lights of earlier credulity and specu- 
lation into the clear and simple human 
life of his times and race. Accordingly 
his words and deeds take on more normal 
meanings. They get their great power 
and value less from their eccentric nature 
and more from the profound way in which 
they express and clarify the best spirit 
and ideals of his people. This sense of 
reality concerning Jesus is strengthened 
by the direct and unafifected relation 
which he sustained toward his disciples. 
He encouraged them to the closest per- 
sonal companionship. He called them 
friends, a term which he consciously chose 
and into which he put the very soul of his 
gospel. Note the deliberation of his 
words : ''No longer do I call you servants ; 



64 THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 

for the servant knoweth not what his 
lord doeth; but I have called you friends; 
for all things that I heard from my Father 
I have made known unto you." By thai 
new and hearty word he revealed the true 
bond between himself and his followers 
and the foundation of all genuine fellow- 
ship. It is therefore of central importance 
to understand what the friendship of Jesus 
involves. I shall consider its basis, its 
authority and its value as a social ideal. 
Friendship always rests upon some sort 
of equality. It is essentially a reciprocal 
relationship. In this respect it stands in 
sharp contrast to such terms as master 
and servant, king and subject, priest and 
people. All these imply a definite and 
radical inequality. They are mutually ex- 
clusive and presuppose dififerences of birth 
or fortune or endov/ment. It was just 
this external sense of difference which 
Jesus sought to remove, and he indicated 
this intention by choosing a designation 
in its very nature antithetic to all class 
distinctions. The correlative of the word 
friend is also friend, but the correlative of 



TEE FRIENDSEIP OF JESUS 65 

master is servant, which suggests a totally 
different sphere of life. Jesus put himself 
upon the same plane with his followers, 
both by adapting himself to them and by 
elevating them so far as possible to his 
own point of view. 

The proof which he gives of his sincer- 
ity in calling them friends is further il- 
lustration of the fact that his friendship 
requires mutual confidence. The guaran- 
tee of friendliness is frank, unreserved 
communication. Secrecy or indirectness 
is a barrier and menace to good fellow- 
ship. It belongs to the relation of master 
and servant. The servant knoweth not 
what his lord doeth. But Jesus told his 
disciples everything. His faithful en- 
deavor had been to make known his whole 
thought and purpose. He used the method 
of conversation, of question and answer, 
to make plain his meaning. His stories 
were homely and picturesque vehicles for 
the deepest and most intimate thoughts 
of his heart. The only hindrance to the 
complete understanding of Jesus in his 
own day as in this, arose from the dull- 



66 TEE DIVINITY OF CERIST 

ness, the blindness, the wickedness of hu- 
man nature. It is everywhere his desire 
to be revealed, disclosed, transparent. 

One of the specific doctrines of Jesus 
which gave support to the sense of equal- 
ity through which alone friendship could 
be cultivated was that of the universal 
fatherhood of God. He himself was the 
son of God, but so also were hib 
disciples sons of God. In the prayer 
which he taught them he said. Our 
Father. There was therefore nothing 
inconsistent in being friends with them. 
It was the natural attitude. Their 
sonship justified the unfailing interest 
of Christ in all classes of people, ani 
it thrilled all who heard his message 
with a new sense of self-respect and 
hope. This doctrine gave a new value 
to the human soul and explained the zest 
and seriousness and sympathy with which 
Jesus companied with them and called 
them friends. No other motive was needed 
to account for the interest which he took 
in people. That alone was sufficient rea- 
son for his patience and persistence and 
optimism. 



THE FRIENDSHIP OF JESUS 67 

Another powerful factor in the develop- 
ment of mutual interest between individ- 
uals is some common experience, m ideals 
cherished, work accomplished, loss sus- 
tained, injustice felt or suffering endured. 
Jesus saw that his followers and he would 
be welded together in fiery furnaces and 
herioc struggles. It would be another 
test and evidence of their friendship. They 
would always know that he too had suf- 
fered for the truth. No man could give 
greater evidence of his love for them 
than by the consecration of his whole 
life even to the point of death. By nothing 
else has the world been touched and 
drawn to Christ so much as by the sense 
of his manifold experience of the common 
human lot. His hunger, thirst, weariness, 
toil, tears, temptations, quicken our sym- 
pathy and devotion. Here at least he was 
like us. The friendship of such a man 
is sensitive, resourceful and strong. He 
can give good counsel, he can uplift the 
discouraged and forsaken. He can inspire 
new ambition, and point the way to the 
things which satisfy and save. 



68 TEE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 

But when Christ proclaimed himself a 
friend, what became of his authority? 
Obviously in giving up the relation of 
master, he gave up also the kind of au- 
thority which belongs to it. Friendship 
excludes the very idea of authority based 
upon power or magic or secrets. It is 
incompatible with any external or arbi- 
trary commands. It retains only the au- 
thority of the truth, of experience, of that 
which appeals to the conscience and rea- 
son. What an emancipation was pro- 
claimed when Jesus said, Ye shall know 
the truth and the truth shall make you 
free ! There is no other spiritual freedom, 
and this must be won by each individual 
for himself. Even Jesus himself can exert 
no real influence over men except through 
the truth, and indeed through their per- 
ception of the truth. 

It was this which gave such a wealth of 
meaning to his declaration : A new com- 
mandment I give unto you, that ye love 
one another. That commandment was so 
new, so unique, that it was in fact some- 
thing far different from a legal command. 



THE FRIENDSHIP OF JESUS 69 

How can anyone love to order? Every 
true parent knows that his child's affec- 
tion is not subject to force. The child 
must be won through appeals to his in- 
terests, his intelligence, his self-respect. 
It is in that way alone that the wisest and 
greatest of men can permanently control 
their fellow men. The gospel of friend- 
ship between God and man was therefore 
a far higher stage than religion had ever 
before consciously attained. The law 
came by Moses, but grace and truth came 
by Jesus Christ. 

The authority of Jesus is the authority 
of a discoverer. He gained unusual in- 
sight into moral and religious truth and 
lived by it himself. He thought of him- 
self as subject to the spiritual forces of 
the world just as others are. His words 
are more convincing and illuminating than 
others because they reflect a larger ex- 
perience and a clearer discernment of the 
moral order. He urged his hearers to test 
his way of life for themselves, not to take 
it upon blind faith. He explicitly told 
them that his experience could not stand 



70 TEE DIViyiTY OF CEIilST 

in stead of theirs. It could only show the 
way, and give encouragement. W'^hen he 
sent his disciples out as he had gone, he 
warned them that they would meet the 
same difficulties and persecutions. In 
order to attain what he had attained they 
would have to pass through the same 
discipline. He had to win his throne by 
his cross and they must do the same. If 
they could be baptized with the same 
baptism of self-surrender and drink the 
same cup of suffering they could attain 
to the same distinction. He won God's 
love by doing God's will and that way 
was open to every one. 

Nothing of this spirit is signified by the 
authority of a king or master. Their rule 
rests upon the nature of their person, due 
to their birth or some other accident or 
favor of fortune. Whether their com.- 
mands are reasonable or capricious has 
nothing to do with their validity. They 
claim the sovereign right of arbitrary 
power. But all this was discarded by 
Christ the moment he called his disciples 
friends. It would liberate and elevate the 



TEE FRIENDSEIP OF JESUS 71 

Christian consciousness if it could aban- 
don the words king and sovereign. They 
carry the imagery and implications of 
worn-out social institutions and of effete 
forms of thought. They are survivals of 
outgrown customs and they hang upon 
the modern spirit like dead weights. More 
helpful analogies could be found in the 
spheres of science and of art. Here a 
man's authority depends upon his achieve- 
ments. What he says is accepted in so 
far as it is justified by the known facts 
and by all reasonable tests. The scientist 
himself does not originate nor even vali- 
date the truths with which he deals. At 
least they do not depend upon him as an 
individual. They have objective and uni- 
versal meaning and he himself is as much 
subject to them as anyone else. The only 
way in which he can make them truly 
effective for other persons is by taking 
those persons into his confidence, by lead- 
ing them to his own knowledge and in- 
sight and technical skill. 

Here is found the same kind of re- 
lationship into which Jesus sought to 



72 TEE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 

bring his disciples. He awakened them 
to his own views and ambitions. He 
gave them eyes to see the foundations 
of the moral order in the world about 
them. For example, a man cannot be 
satisfied in a life of pleasure. The 
prodigal son, the living counterpart for 
whom may be seen in any community, 
is the evidence. Or again, riches are not 
stable enough to justify one's whole 
effort ; look at the rich fool ! Or once 
more a conventional, formal, traditional 
religion keeps people away from God and 
true righteousness. The Pharisees of 
every age are the proof. In the same way 
every beatitude, and the whole teaching 
of Jesus grounds itself in experience, in 
the purpose which it serves, in the trans- 
formation which it effects in the character 
of him who follows it. It is on this ac- 
count that Jesus has eternal value for the 
religious life. His authority is that of 
one who has himself found God — found 
him a father and a companion of earnest 
souls. Jesus only tells us what he has 
first learned and proved and what can 



TEE FRIENDSHIP OF JESUS 73 

be proved over and over again in the life 
of both his humblest and his greatest dis- 
ciple. 

The friendship which Jesus taught and 
saw partially realized among his immedi- 
ate followers has become more and more 
a conscious social ideal. It has become 
a kind of test and standard of progress. 
The writer of Proverbs seems to have 
thought the possibilities of friendship very 
limited. The word with him does not 
have the steady, habitual meaning of 
Christian thought. Mere courtiers, or the 
clientele of a rich man are called friends, 
and he that maketh many friends of thai 
kind ''doeth it to his own destruction.'' In 
that earlier view it is not thought possi- 
ble to have many true, genuine friends. It 
was Jesus who emphasized the possibility 
and the duty of having multitudes of 
friends. He enjoined and exemplified a 
friendship which was not hindered by any 
external conditions of station or race or 
occupation. It required only a right dis- 
position, a disposition of deference and 
helpfulness, a recognition of the value and 



74 TEE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 

capacities of human beings. Wherever 
the sense of spiritual kinship existed or 
could be cultivated, there was an open 
way for the kingdom of heaven. 

That Jesus lived by that principle him- 
. self is proved by the sneers of his op- 
ponents, who called him a friend of tax- 
gatherers and the godless. If we could 
appreciate the abhorrence and scorn which 
was put into those words by the conven- 
tional people who used them, we would 
realize the independence and human sym- 
pathy of Jesus in finding companionship 
among the ostracized and forlorn. Doubt- 
less their sincerity as well as their need 
appealed to him, for in his thought the 
candid sinner is nearer the kingdom than 
the pretentious saint. Hypocrisy is the 
worst enemy of friendship and therefore 
Jesus denounced it more bitterly than any 
other sin. But he had some hope of those 
who knew their faults and made no claim 
to righteousness. 

Gradually the broad, inclusive love of 
Jesus has been imitated by his church. 
Throughout all classes of men there is a 



THE FRIENDSHIP OF JESUS 75 

growing sense of a common nature and of 
reciprocal interests. By slow process it 
is being made clear that all social insti- 
tutions must discontinue the master-ser- 
vant relation and enter into more human 
and brotherly co-operation. The institu- 
tion of slavery was doomed when the 
spirit of the gospel rose to power over 
the consciences of men. It is true Jesus 
did not decry the external fact of slavery 
but he did undermine it and removed all 
but the name by enjoining kindness on 
the part of masters and faithfulness on the 
part of slaves. Imagine the relation be- 
tween these classes where both were truly 
Christian ! Gentleness and guidance from 
the superior, docility and patient toil from 
the inferior, with a mutual understanding. 
Is it any wonder that in numerous in- 
stances the abolition of American slavery 
made little difference between master and 
servants because the latter preferred to 
remain practically the same as they were? 
It is not, after all, the external relations 
which determine the value of life but 
rather the personal and human factors. 



76 THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 

Without the latter no conditions can be 
judged by Christian principles. 

Jesus doubtless startled his hearers by 
the application of this test of friendship 
to the family, the oldest and most sacred 
social institution. When someone came 
and announced that his mother and 
brothers desired to speak to him, he said, 
Who is my mother? and who are my 
brothers? Whosoever shall do the will 
of my Father which is in heaven, the same 
is my brother, and sister, and mother. 
That is to say that the accident of birth 
cannot determine spiritual relationships. 
It frequently happens that by difference 
of temperament or long separation, blood 
relationship becomes quite meaningless, 
and it is never of vital import except as 
it is permeated and idealized by common 
interests and heart to heart experiences. 
Unless brothers are also good friends, 
unless husband and wife, parents and 
children are also true companions, they 
miss the richest and the finest joys of the 
home. They need to devote themselves 
with the utmost care and patience to the 



THE FRIENDSHIP OF JESUS 77 

cultivation of mutual friendship, for which 
nothing is so effective as the simple re- 
ligion of Jesus. 

Nowhere has the inner and mutual 
sense of equality and helpfulness been 
more effective than in modern education. 
It has entirely changed the attitude of 
the teacher toward the child. Instead of 
regarding him as a rebellious nature to 
be subdued and repressed, the teacher has 
begun to put herself at his side, as Rous- 
seau advised. She now studies his in- 
terests, his talents, his play and his work 
to know how she can best befriend him in 
order to guide him. The formal restraints 
and the dull exercises of older methods 
have largely given way to natural means. 
Nothing could better illustrate the spirit 
of the teacher who rebuked his disciples 
for ignoring the children and graciously 
received them into his arms, with bless- 
ings. 

Other vast fields of human life remained 
to be brought under the influence of this 
ideal. It has developed the race problem, 
which is something far more than a matter 



78 THE DITiyiTY OF CHRIST 

of political economy or politics. It has 
precipitated the great social problems of 
our day. Even.- move of organized labor 
and of capital adds proof to the impossi- 
bility of longer maintaining masters and 
servants in the industrial life. Their in- 
terests are one and they will best be pro- 
moted by friendship, not by enmity. Out 
in the still larger spheres, the lesson is 
being learned upon an international scale, 
and the growing importance of diplomacy 
and of arbitration point to the better day 
of peace and national friendship. 

But the greatest changes of all are be- 
ing wrought by this friendship of Jesus 
in the lives of his followers and in his 
church. It has taken a discouraging 
length of time for Christian people to 
apph" among themselves this central 
theme of Christ's religion, and they are 
far from its full realization yet. But grad- 
ually we are learning how to be friends 
in local congregations and across denomi- 
national lines. At last the av.'ful days of 
religious persecution are past, and it 
seems impossible that they should ever 



THE FRIENDSHIP OF JESUS 79 

return. But Christ prayed for much more 
than tolerance between his disciples. He 
prayed for their union and for their or- 
ganized activity. The simpler views of 
Jesus and the more practical appreciation 
of the friendship which he enjoined are 
now uniting the church and teaching it 
to minister to the needs of mankind. This 
unfailing power of Christ has inspired 
these prophetic lines of Richard Watson 
Gilder : 



Behold him now where he comes! 
Not the Christ of our subtile creeds, 
But the lord of our hearts, of our homes. 
Of our hopes, our prayers, our needs; 
The brother of want and blame. 
The lover of w^omen and men. 
With a love that puts to shame 
All passions of human ken. 

* * * * 

Ah no, thou life of the heart, 
IS'ever shalt thou depart! 
Not till the leaven of God 
Shall lighten each human clod; 
Not till the Avorld shall climb 
To thy height serene, sublime, 
Shall the Christ who enters our door 
Pass to return no more. 



Unless a man has the Spirit of Christ, he does 
not belong to Christ; but if Christ is within you, 
then, though the body is dead as a consequence 
of sin, the spirit is full of Life as a consequence 
of righteousness. 

All who are guided by the Spirit of God are 
God's sons. Romans 8. 

Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus 
Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates. 

2 Corinthians 13:5. 



V. 

THE REINCARNATION OF 
CHRIST. 

To the apostle Paul, the presence of 
Christ in the believer's life, was a demon- 
strable fact. The great proof of it was 
the expulsion of the carnal or sinful na- 
ture. 'Tf Christ is in you, the body is 
dead," — ''body'' meaning for him the 
lower nature in all its forms. Another 
evidence of Christ being in a man, was 
the man's willingness to suffer for the 
same things for which Christ suffered. 
*'We are troubled on every side," he said, 
''yet not distressed ; we are perplexed, but 
not in despair; persecuted, but not for- 
saken; cast down, but not destroyed; al- 
ways bearing about in the body the dy- 
ing of the Lord Jesus, that the life also 
of Jesus might be made manifest in our 
body." It was from the Christ in him 
that Paul derived strength to do all things. 
So completely did he feel himself identi- 
fied with his master that he exclaimed, 



S2 THE DiriXITY OF CHRIST 

"to me to live is Christ/' and again, *"I 
live, yet not I, but Ciirist livetii in me: 
and liie life wnich I now live in the flesh 
I live by the faith of the Son of God, who 
loved me and gave himself for me." There 
are other similar expressions in Paul's 
writings concerning the indwelling of God 
and of the Holy Spirit as well as of Christ. 
But whatever the phrase, the import is 
ever the same, that the divine energy 
takes possession of the believer, guides 
his will, gives him words to speak and 
yearns to utter itself fully in his life. 

In order to realize the significance of 
this language of Paul, it is necessar}^ to 
take it in connection with the other set 
of forces which operate in the world. It 
is not only Chris: who may enter into a 
man. Satan and other evil spirits may 
do the same. Paul attributes the wicked- 
ness of people to their being possessed by 
Satan, just as he explains their goodness 
by the presence of Christ. He says : '''If 
our gospel be hid. it is hid to them that 
are lost: in wh:m the god of this world 
hath blinded the minds of them, which be- 



THE REINCARNATION OF CHRIST 83 

lieve not." He excuses himself for not 
visiting the Thessalonians by the fact that 
once and again Satan hindered him. In 
his unsuccessful struggle to do the right, 
he explains it by the presence in him of 
the carnal mind. ''It is no more I that 
do it^ but sin that dwelleth in me.'' There 
are many remarks of Paul which show 
that he had a very vivid belief that the 
world about him was peopled by good 
and by bad spirits, which could enter into 
and possess men and control their acts, 
"Principalities, powers and rulers of the 
darkness of this world" are for him evil 
beings just as real as the devil himself, 
against whose wiles the Christian is urged 
to put on the whole armor of God. It was 
common in the New Testament times to 
attribute physical disease to demons 
which entered the body, and Paul speaks 
of his own physical malady, his ''thorn 
in the flesh" as a messenger of Satan. It 
was in order to conquer this ruler of the 
evil world that it became necessary for 
Christ to die. Put Christ's death did not 
destroy the evil spirits, it only broke their 



84 IRE DITIXITY OF CHRIST 

power and made it possible for a man 
possessed by the good spirit of Christ to 
attain virtue and eternal life. 

The human heart was thus a battle 
ground for the possession of which the 
good and the evil contended. This was 
no figure of speech for the apostles, but 
was the statement of actual and tremend- 
ous realities. The presence of the evil 
demons was abundantly attested by 
ph\-sical maladies and by all forms of 
immorality-, lying, drunkenness, blas- 
phemy, covetousness. pride, and love of 
pleasure. Even Luke, who was a phj^sician, 
and who would naturally have taken a more 
scientific view if it had existed at that 
time, constantly attributed diseases to 
evil spirits. 

To be possessed by Christ, to have him 
dwelling in one, meant for St. Paul, the 
presence of a power stronger than the 
evil spirits which would bring one safely 
through ever}' temptation, every loss, 
every hardship, and enable him at last 
to meet fearlessly the greatest foe — death 
itself — and through Christ to rise even 



THE REINCARNATION OF CHRIST 85 

from the grave. The subHme faith of 
Paul opposed to this encircling host of 
evil spirits the mightier spirit of Christ. 
''We are more than conquerors/' he ex- 
claimed, ''through him that loved us. For 
I am persuaded that neither death, nor 
life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor 
powers, nor things present, nor things 
to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any 
other creature, shall be able to separate 
us from the love of God, which is in Christ 
Jesus our Lord." It was in such an age 
that the miracles, particularly the resur- 
rection of Christ, made their powerful ap- 
peal to the imagination. It was a time 
when every one believed in ghosts, in 
apparitions, in miracles and wonders. 
The only way in which good spirits could 
be shown to be more powerful than evil 
spirits, was by performing much more 
astounding miracles. It was perhaps on 
this account that the resurrection from 
the dead, which would everywhere be con- 
sidered the greatest miracle, was made by 
Paul the central factor in the proof of 
Christ's divinity. And there is no doubt 



86 THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 

that Paul believed Christ to be divine 
in a unique sense — a very God indeed, 
a Spirit which belonged to the upper 
heaven, far above the evil spirits dwelling 
in the atmosphere of the earth, and far 
above the angels and wonder£ul beings in- 
habiting the upper air. Christ had mani- 
fested the mysterious powers of super- 
natural beings. He had healed diseases 
and thus shown power over demons, he 
displayed more than human compassion 
and knowledge, he was able to become in- 
visible to the multitude when danger 
threatened and had suddenly appeared in 
the midst of his disciples after his death, 
while they were together behind closed 
doors, and at last he had risen bodily from 
the earth into the clouds of heaven, from 
which St. Paul expected him to return 
one day with still greater glory. Last of 
all Christ had appeared to Paul himself 
upon the Damascus road, converted him, 
and commissioned him to go as an am- 
bassador far hence to the Gentiles. 

It was not difficult, therefore, for Paul 
to believe that Christ could actuallv come 



THE REINCARNATION OF CHRI&T 87 

into the hearts of his disciples, shape their 
desires, mould their wills, and enable them 
to gain a glorious victory over every form 
of evil. The means by which Christ could 
be brought into human beings was by 
their confessing his all-powerful name. 
The importance attaching to this name 
is almost suggestive of magic. "There 
is no other name given under heaven 
among men whereby you must be saved/' 
At his name finally, in the last judgment- 
scene ''every knee shall bow and every 
tongue confess him Lord of all." This 
confession of the name was connected 
with faith, and faith often had a mystical 
meaning for the early church, as though 
it were a power by which the divine favor 
could be secured. Abraham's faith had 
counted to him for righteousness, and it 
was by faith alone that all men could be 
justified. By this faith Christ entered into 
the believer and he became at once super- 
ior to the evil spirits and to the whole 
present evil world. This transition from 
sin and death to righteousness and eternal 
life, was symbolized, if not finally effected, 



88 THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 

by the immersion of the believer into 
water as into a grave, and by his arising 
out of it in the likeness of the resurrection 
of Christ. Thenceforward he became a 
new creature, and belonged to the heaven- 
ly kingdom. 

But this side of Paul's teaching con- 
cerning the indwelling of Christ in tb'^* 
heart of the believer does not exhaust the 
meaning of that great conception. This 
is but the form, of which the substance 
alone has permanent and vital signifi- 
cance. We may be indifferent to the form 
except in so far as it enables us to ap- 
preciate the apostles' meaning. The be- 
lief in spirits as it existed in Paul's day 
has largely passed away. Demoniacal 
possession as the explanation of disease 
has been discarded, and it is no longer 
held as the cause of immoral conduct. The 
air about us is not regarded as the abode 
of the hosts of Satan, and the forces at 
war in the soul of man are not personi- 
fied. We no longer look for the good to 
triumph in our hearts by mysterious 
means, and the church instead of advanc- 



TEE REINCARNATION OF CHRIST 89 

ing miracles as evidences of its claims is 
curiously enough engaged at times in 
seeking evidence for the miracles. 

In what sense then do we today believe 
in the indwelling of Christ? Certainly 
not in the sense that at conversion by the 
confession of his name and the exercise 
of faith the literal spirit or ghost of Jesus 
enters our bodies to dwell there. But 
rather do we mean that then we commit 
ourselves unreservedly to his way of life, 
we try to possess ourselves of his thoughts, 
his feelings and his ambitions. We seek 
to have his mind in us, as Paul puts it, 
a mind of humility, of love, of self-sacri- 
fice. In that way it is possible to have 
the character, the likeness of Christ de- 
veloped in human hearts. Paul wrote to 
the Galatians: "My little children, of 
whom I travail in birth again until Christ 
be formed in you.'' 

To have Christ dwelling in the heart 
means then, beside anything mystical or 
supernatural, the possession of his will 
and character in a very matter of fact way. 
Paul refused to be satisfied with any claim 



90 TEE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 

to the possession of Christ on the part of 
those who could not show the evidence in 
their daily lives. He wrote to the Colos- 
sians, ''If ye then be risen with Christ, seek 
those things which are above. Lie not to 
one another. Put on bowels of mercies, 
kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, 
longsuffering, forbearing one another, and 
forgiving one another, if any man have a 
quarrel against any; and above all put 
on charity, and let the peace of God rule 
in your hearts/' 

This practical test constitutes the per- 
manent standard by which all men may 
judge themselves and one another, and 
determine whether Christ dwells in them. 
"Know ye not your own selves, how that 
Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be re- 
probates?" The thing by which alone a 
man may assure himself of the divine 
presence is not some single religious im- 
pulse in the past, or obedience to some 
outward ordinance, but the continual 
sense of living the best life of which ^e is 
capable. The great denial of Christ is the 
failure to do one's utmost to live a Christ- 



TEE REINCARNATION OF CHRIST 91 

like life. In common speech it is the 
failure to put all one's energy and thought 
and ideals into each act of life. 

This embodiment or reincarnation of 
Christ in men, may be freed entirely from 
the mystical idea that his soul or spirit 
enters the physical body. It has nothing 
in common v/ith the belief of Buddhism, 
for example, which holds that the soul of 
Buddha enters generation after generation 
into certain holy men. This belief belongs 
to an earlier stage of the faith of man- 
kind, and surrounds itself with all manner 
of seclusion from the actual life of men. 
It hides its greatest saints away from the 
struggle and pain of life. The most iso- 
lated and mysterious city of the earth was, 
until recently, the sacred city of Lhasa in the 
hermit nation of Tibet, in the inner clois- 
ters of which, living ascetic, contempla- 
tive life was the highest functionary of the 
Buddhist faith, believed by his followers to 
be the reincarnation of the great Buddha, 
the founder of the religion. Such a re- 
ligion cannot endure contact with science 
and with the practical concerns of life. 



92 TEE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 

But the reincarnation of Christ is the for- 
mation of a Christ-like character in his 
disciples, in the midst of all the activities 
of life, welcoming all knowledge, and all 
progress as aids in its accomplishment. 

This presence of Christ in the heart re- 
sults in fresh interest, in growth, in free- 
dom and in contentment. The new in- 
terest in life which belongs to Christian 
experience is expressed in the saying that 
the believer becomes a ''new creature, 
old things are passed away — Behold all 
things are new/' To come into possession 
of any other man's mind and habit of ac- 
tion, to look out upon the world through 
another's eyes would be certain to give 
new interest and meaning to everything. 
That is precisely the experience we have 
had when we learned to see the world 
through the mind of a great astronomer, 
or geologist, or historian, or philosopher, 
or poet. There is the same novelty when 
we view things from the standpoint and 
with the eye of the world's greatest re- 
ligious genius, ^^^hen one sees things as 
Jesus saw them, they get a vital interest 



TEE REINCARNATION OF CHRIST 93 

through the sense of the values which he 
attached to them. He saw life in a clearer 
moral perspective than any one who has 
ever lived. He put highest in the scale 
those human beings who were possessed 
of the unselfish ideals of love and who 
made all else subordinate to them. In 
comparison with such, those who devoted 
themselves chiefly to riches or pleasure 
or fame stood far below. Again it was 
not the quantiTy so much as the quality 
of a man's virtue which gained his ap- 
proval. The widow giving her mite for 
a good cause really did more in his sight 
than those who out of their riches gave 
large sums. Jesus was not affected by 
the outward appearance which so easily 
deceived others, and therefore he esti- 
mated men with a fairness rnd largeness 
of vision which often reversed the ordi- 
nary judgments. Take any one of h's 
great ideas such as humility, love, provi- 
dence or eternity and look at the world 
through it. It is like looking through' 
colored lenses. Or better still, it is like 
using lenses of different convexity. When 



94 TEE DiriXITY OF CHRIST 

you reverse the opera glass, all the objects 
about you fall away into surprising dis- 
tances. And when you go into a laughing 
gallery you are amused at the different 
forms and proportions under which you 
appear. The qualities of life which Jesus 
constantly employed have much the same 
effect in our estimates of character. They 
bring into the foreground Lazarus in- 
stead of Dives, the widow with her mite 
instead of the rich men, the innocent child 
instead of the selfrighteous Scribe, the 
obscure publican rather than the Pharisee. 
Through the eye of Jesus one sees no 
color lines between races of men. The 
only distinctions are moral and spiritual. 
One sees none of the titles and ranks and 
classes of society except those which are 
founded upon character. AVhat appeared 
small and remote before has moved into 
the foreground and become great. The 
experience of Christian people has often 
been of this kind, so that they have given 
up the baubles of pleasure and selfish ease 
to work for new values which Christ re- 
veals. 



TEE REINCARNATION OF CHRIST 95 

To have Christ in one's heart also in- 
volves growth. One w^hose life is all 
settled so that it involves no problems, 
no doubts, no aspirations may very well 
believe that he does not possess Christ. 
In St. Paul, Christ was an unsettling and 
disturbing presence, constantly urging 
him on to larger tasks, exposing him 
to new dangers, and revealing to him new 
visions of truth and duty. Christ took 
him out of Jerusalem into Asia, and from 
Asia to Europe, from Ephesus to Corinth, 
and from Corinth to Athens and finally 
to Rome. He was never suffered to re- 
main long in a place. That divine unrest, 
that urgency toward other and larger 
things in his outward life, was accom- 
panied by mental unrest and spiritual 
struggle. He was ever pressing forward 
toward the mark of his calling, and anx- 
iously apprehensive lest having saved 
others he might himself become a cast-a- 
way. He constantly urged his converts 
to grow in grace and knowledge, and the 
ideal which he set before them was noth- 
ing less than the perfect stature of Christ. 



96 THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 

He rebuked all signs of indolence, and of 
false contentment. He urged them to 
study the scriptures, to stimulate one an- 
other by speech and by noble example, 
and to be always open minded toward 
the truth. To suppress the deeper ques- 
tionings of the soul or to refuse to take 
up new duties because they were strange 
or difficult, would have been to quench* 
the divine spirit within. Paul consoled 
himself that with new sufferings and new 
duties came new strength. "My grace is 
sufficient for thee" was the assurance by 
which he went bravely forward, running 
the race with all his might and fighting 
all manner of foes. 

A third result which comes from the 
possession of the mind of Christ is free- 
dom. The Christian is free from all ex- 
ternal authority. Not even Christ imposes 
any arbitrary demands upon him. The 
Christian is not like a boy working a 
problem in arithmetic and stopping fre- 
quently to refer to the rule. The true 
Christian's conscience and will are so per- 
meated by the spirit of Christ that he 



TEE REINCARNATION OF CHRMT 97 

judges for himself whether certain con- 
duct is right. Jesus did not attempt to 
lay down speciiic rules. He only insisted 
on having the heart right, the disposition 
pure, and the will responsive to the good. 
When these conditions were present the 
individual would not go wrong. 

This freedom of the Christian is like 
the freedom of an experienced traveler. 
He does not have to turn all the while 
to the maps and directions of a guide book. 
He moves freely and joyfully among the 
wonders and upon the highways of the 
moral life, not because he has discarded 
the book but because he has its principles 
in his heart. Or again he is a free citizen 
of the state, not because he defies the 
law, but because he fulfills it spontane- 
ously. To be peaceable, and honest and 
sober belongs to his plan of life. He does 
not need to trouble himself about the 
laws pertaining to these things any more 
than an educated man needs to study the 
alphabet or the multiplication table. Even 
where he meets new experiences and un- 
dertakes more difficult moral tasks, he pos- 



98 TEE DiriXITY OF CHIUST 

sesses the freedom of the artist who en- 
joys his work. He exerts himself with 
a sense of joy and satisfaction, which 
make him unconscious of fatigue, and 
which carry him uncomplaining through 
difficulties and discouragements. Perfect 
love casts out fear, and a deep trust takes 
away all anxious thought. 

This freedom from worry is one of the 
greatest charms of the religious life. It 
is well illustrated in the life of Brother 
Lawrence, a monk of the seventeenth 
century. He went into the monastery to 
punish himself, to make a strenuous and 
painful sacrifice of himself to God. "I 
engaged in a religious life only for the 
love of God," he says, "and I have en- 
deavored to act purely for the love of 
God.'' "But God disappointed him, for 
from that time he met with nothing but 
satisfaction, and passed his life in perfect 
liberty and continual joy. He had to do 
work in the kitchen (to which he had a 
great aversion) but accustomed himself 
to do everything there for the love of 
God, and with prayer upon all occasions 



THE REINCARNATION OF CHRIST 99 

for his grace to do his work well, and had 
found everything easy during fifteen years 
that he had been employed there/' 

It is often in what seem to be the most 
unfavorable circumstances like these that 
the presence and power of one's religion 
appears. Tolstoi illustrates this in his 
novel "War and Peace." The Russian 
hero, Peter, is immensely rich, but during 
Napoleon's invasion is taken prisoner and 
forced on long marches in the retreat of 
the French. Suffering all forms of un- 
wonted exposure and privation, he never- 
theless "appreciated for the first time, be- 
cause he was deprived of it, the happiness 
of eating when he was hungry, of drinking 
when he was thirsty, of sleeping when 
he was sleepy and of talking when he 
felt the desire to exchange some words. 
In it all, he felt a strange moral calm. 
He learnt that man is meant for happiness, 
and this happiness is in him, in the satis- 
faction of the daily needs of existence and 
that unhappiness is the fatal result, not 
of our need, but of our abundance. AVhen 
calm reigned in the camp, and the embers 



100 TEE DITiyiTY OF CERIST 

paled, and little by little went out, the full 
moon had reached the zenith. The woods 
and the fields round about lay clearly 
visible; and beyond the inundation of light 
which filled them, the view plunged into 
the limitless horizon. Then Peter cast 
his eyes upon the firmament, filled at that 
hour with myriads of stars. 'AH that is 
mine,' he thought. 'All that is in me, is 
me ! and that is what they think they have 
taken prisoner. That is what they have 
shut up in a cabin.' So he smiled, and 
turned in to sleep among his comrades." 

Such experiences as these w^ere familiar 
to the Apostle Paul. "I have learned" 
he says, ''in whatsoever state I am there- 
with to be content. I know both how to 
be abased, and how to abound, every- 
where and in all things I am instructed 
both to be full and to be hungry, both to 
abound and to suffer need. I can do all 
things through Christ who strengthenetH 
me." 

The indwelling of Christ, is then, we 
may conclude, one way of expressing the 
fact that God is in us, and that he enters 



THE REINCARNATION OF CHRIST 101 

more and more fully as we open our hearts 
to him. The great test of his presence is 
no strange experience. It is intensely 
practical. It is the life we live, and it is 
capable therefore of objective realization 
by ourselves and others. Among these 
moral fruits of the spirit abiding in us, 
are the Christian's interest in life, his 
sense of its eternal newness, its refresh- 
ing beauty and its inexhaustible resources. 
The true Christian is also a growing soul, 
constantly transformed from glory to 
glory, ever wrestling, battling and win- 
ning spiritual victories. And finally the 
soul possessed by Christ enjoys a freedom 
and a peace which the world cannot give 
nor take away, — a serene calm which at- 
tends his keenest activity and deepest 
sorrow — a profound sense that all things 
work together for good to them that love 
God. 



"How our hearts glowed/' the disciples said 
to each other, "while he was talking to us on 
the road, and when he explained the Scriptures 
to us!" Then they got up and returned without 
loss of time to Jerusalem, where they found the 
eleven and their companions all together, who 
told them that the Master had really risen 
from the grave, and had appeared to Simon. So 
they related what had happened on their road, 
and how they had recognized Jesus on his break- 
ing the bread. While they were still talking 
about these things, Jesus himself stood among 
them., and greeted them with his blessing. 

St. Luke 24:32-36. 



VI. 

TWO OR THREE AND CHRIST. 

''Where two or three are gathered to- 
gether in my name, there am I in the 
midst of them/' 

This text has been an inspiration to lit- 
tle groups of Christians ever since the 
words were spoken. How many times 
it has been repeated in a poorly attended 
prayer-meeting! How often it has been 
the heartening message of the faithful few 
who were trying to keep up a mission 
church, or to preserve the forms of wor- 
ship in an organization many of whose 
members had been spiritually frost-bitten ! 
Do you not recall your experience as a 
child, when you had been taken to one 
of the mid-week meetings of the church? 
As the gray-haired elder prayed, he 
seemed to repeat the words of this text 
both as a kind of challenge for their ful- 
fillment and as an assurance that they 
were already realized by the actual pres- 



104 TEE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 

ence of Christ ''Where two or three are 
gathered together in my name, there am 
I in the midst of them" — perhaps you cau- 
tiously looked about over the bowed heads 
to see if there were really a heavenly 
presence added to the earnest company. 
With more maturity you accepted what 
was probably the common view, that 
Christ was there in a spiritual presence, 
invisible, yet somehow just separated 
from sight by the thinnest veil through 
which, as of old, it would be easy for 
him to appear to the bodily eye. Or you 
thought of him as far away in another 
w^orld, yet able to see and hear and share 
in all that his loyal disciples experienced. 
How many full-grown men and women 
have longed for some certain, tangible 
evidence of that presence. They have 
prayed and waited and watched. A few 
have become ecstatic over a vision of 
Christ granted them in dreams or in hal- 
lucinations, but the great majority of nor- 
mal folk have either given it all up as 
impossible or have been content with the 
conviction that since Christ promised it, 



TWO OR THREE AND CHRIST 105 

the promise must be fulfilled, though mor- 
tals may not know how it is accomplished. 
I confess that it is with mingled sur- 
prise and satisfaction that I have found 
an unexpected truth and reasonableness 
in these words, when interpreted in terms 
of our everyday and matter-of-fact ex- 
periences. Indeed, they express in the 
simplest way the profound truth that re- 
ligion lives in the vital association and 
companionship of those who meet together 
in the interest of great concerns. Let us 
begin with plain and homely matters. 
When two or three people meet, even in 
the most casual manner, something is 
sure to happen. Strangers just intro- 
duced strike fire at once because each finds 
the other interested in baseball or in poli- 
tics and discovers that he is on the ''right 
side" in his enthusiasm. Perhaps they 
have mutual friends, have read the same 
book, both love music or the drama, or 
have an interest in aeroplanes or fruit- 
farms. Any group of Americans are prac- 
tically certain to warm up with a common 
emotion over the higher cost of living, or 



106 THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 

the jokes of Mark Twain, or the memory 
of Abraham Lincoln. Wherever people 
get together, however slight the occasion, 
there rises in their midst this common fac- 
tor, this sense of the things they experi- 
ence as fellow-travelers in the world. 

One seldom sits down in a street-car, 
even where the people are the remotest 
strangers, without feeling a kind of stir- 
ring of instincts deep in his nature. The 
occupants of the car look him over, with 
side-glances or with a stare, according to 
the kind of people they are, and presently 
they accept him and settle into seeming 
indifference to his presence. In a half- 
hour's ride, in spite of the strangeness and 
the changes of passengers, there begins to 
form a kind of coagulation of personalities, 
a certain sense of a company, of a kind 
of fellow feeling and kinship. The reality 
and depth of this mood is proved by any 
slight incident which gives it definite 
shape and expression. In case of sudden 
rain, there is a shifting of seats and per- 
haps an audible complaint about the 
weather to which everyone inwardly as- 



TWO OB THREE AND CHRIST 107 

sents, although the regard for ''good form" 
may keep all faces quite rigid and expres- 
sionless. Or if a coal wagon has broken 
down on the track, there is soon a cranmg 
of necks, a general wave of depression, 
and a sort of mutual resentment at the 
wagon, with a corresponding sense of 
sympathy fur all who suffer together the 
inconvenience and irritation of the delay. 
If this nascent social attitude can germi- 
nate under such conditions in so short a 
time, to what extent ma3/ it not develop 
when noble souls unite their wills in a 
great service for Christ and the world? It 
is sometimes a formless and shadowy 
presence, dissolving with the passing mo- 
ment, but again it is a presence, majestic, 
and stable, with a personality dependable 
and consistent. Where the associations 
are based upon great concerns and are 
continued through a long period of time, 
the common consciousness rises to its 
most impressive development. It welds 
together a group of people, — a family, a 
clan or a race — in devotion to the highest 
interests. That is the secret of Christian- 



108 TEE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 

ity. It draws men into great tasks, and 
by virtue of common interests develops in 
them a spirit of comradeship, of commun- 
ion and fellowship. Jesus undoubtedly 
shared this feeling with his disciples. He 
felt himself one with them in a simple 
bond of brotherhood and friendship. After 
his death he was still with them in spirit 
His words and his personality lived in 
their imaginations and in their loyal mem- 
ories. Where any two or three were to- 
gether, they talked of him and reminded 
each other of what he had said, and of 
how he had lived among them. Their 
loyalty to him was the strongest bond 
between them and the strength of that 
bond was increased by every obstacle 
they encountered. Their persecutions, 
imprisonments and chains seemed only to 
unite them the more closely and to give 
them a heightened sense of the power and 
consolation of his spiritual presence. 

Now the laws of the inner life do not 
change in any radical way from age to 
age. The psychical experiences are the 
same for us as they were for the imme- 



TWO OR THREE AND CHRIST 109 

diate disciples of Jesus. The same phe- 
nomena constitute the essence of religion 
now as then, and there is the same se- 
quence in the events of the spiritual world. 
The central thing emphasized in the 
text is the fundamental importance of 
getting together in the interests of great 
concerns, gathering together in the name 
of Christ. ^Tn the name of Christ'' here 
means, in the spirit of Christ, or with the 
mind of Christ. It cannot mean the union 
of people under the mere literal name of 
Christ. It is conceivable that persons 
might unite under his name and share in 
no way in his spirit. There is still too 
much of such superstition in the world, 
too much shouting of Lord ! Lord ! and too 
little doing of his will. To gather to- 
gether in the name of Christ must be taken 
to mean meeting in the interest of such 
things as belong to his spiritual kingdom, 
meeting in behalf of justice and mercy 
and truth. It may be a committee on 
church finances, or an earnest private con- 
versation in which the name of Christ 
is scarcely mentioned at all, yet there 



110 TEE DIVINITY OF CERIST 

may be generated that wonderful sense 
of fellowship in which something more 
is felt than was present in the sep- 
arate individuals before they met. The 
particular things which Christ taught 
inay not be clearly apprehended by 
the company, but the notion that they 
are assembled to participate in the 
great cause with which his name is 
identified touches each of them, even the 
least one, with a new importance and 
value. The plainest little church, of the 
most ignorant and benighted souls, is 
somehow transformed by the very fact 
that they meet under the banner of a 
mighty cause. They are there thinking, 
as best they can, of the great theme of 
the Bible, the redemption of the human 
race. They feel some share in the vast 
enterprise and their souls straighten up 
and expand as they sing: 

"I love thy kingdom, Lord!" 

A new life wells up within them a3 
they consecrate thepiselves with the 
words : 



TWO OR THREE AND CHRIST 111 

"For her my tears shall fall. 

For her my prayers ascend; 
To her my cares and toils be given, 
Till toils and cares shall end." 

Among the Disciples of Christ alone, 
there are three or four thousand churches 
without regular pastors, and yet they 
meet together every week for a social 
service and for the observance of the 
Lord's Supper. The members themselves 
read the Scriptures, and sing the familiar 
songs. Some of their number tell per- 
sonal experiences, confess their own fail- 
ures, utter their faith, and exhort one an- 
other to greater endeavor. Then some- 
one, an olier man or one who is a leader 
because of some talent or education, pre- 
sides at the communion service. He has 
come there from his farm or his shop with 
a sense of responsibility. He is sincerely 
anxious to honor the service by the best 
he ca nrender. His personal appearance 
bears the marks of a thoughtfulness be- 
yond his daily habit. He is to fulfil a 
sacred office among his fellows and it ele- 
vates him by the very power of its asso- 



112 TEE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 

ciations into a somewhat finer being. 
Likewise all of the participants grow quiet 
and subdued as they partake of the em- 
blems. The smallness, petty jealousies 
and selfishness of life seem checked and 
obliterated by memories of Christ, and 
there rises in their midst something of his 
spirit of forgiveness and of generous sym- 
pathy. It is no accident, nor mere con- 
vention which leads them to sing so often 
at the close of the service that hymn of 
fellowship and hope : 

"Blest be the tie that binds 
Our hearts in Christian love: 
The fellowship of kindred minds 
Is like to that above." 

There is no place in the world where 
this spirit of fellowship is so accessible, 
so spontaneous and overflowing, as in the 
life of the churches. Fraternal orders 
possess a measure of it, and just on that 
account they persist century after century, 
but they are a select group, secret and 
exclusive. It is as if they feared, and no 
doubt wisely, that publicity and utter de- 
mocracy would dispel the charm of their 
association. But the church has such a 
tenacious coherence that it can withstand 



TWO OR THREE Al^D CHRIST 113 

any diversity and almost any distraction. 
Its doors are absolutely open to all 
comers. Its most sacred ordinances are 
conducted where any one may see. Men, 
women and children, saints, sinners and 
lukewarm souls mingle before her altars 
and yet her message and her task create 
on every occasion some glow of reverence 
and of fellowship. The church is able to 
cultivate this attitude literally on the 
street-corners and among the busy throng. 
Somehow people do not laugh at the Sal- 
vation Army. They may not themselves 
be able to join it or to approve the meth- 
ods, but there is too much sincerity and 
earnestness in the Army to allow its street 
services to become utterly ridiculous. Let 
us agree then that when people are gath- 
ered together in the great cause of human 
redemption something significant is sure 
to happen. 

Just what happens we may describe 
still further. There is an increase of per- 
sonality, an addition of something which 
was not there before. Emerson called it 
the Over-Soul, an encircling presence 



114 TEE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 

which seems to surround and flow be- 
tween two kindred spirits. This some- 
thing-plus, which appears when two 
minds meet, is hinted at in the saying 
that "two heads are better than one." But 
it has been pointed out that what Christ 
says is that two heads are better than 
two. ''There still remain the two," says 
Stanton Coit, "but a third party — not 
only a mightier, but one different in gifts 
and qualities — springs into existence. 
Wherever there are two together, there 
are always three, and the third is master, 
by divine right." It is not to be under- 
stood that this phenomenon transpires 
only when just two or three are present, 
but that this is the lower limit of the ex- 
perience. That enlargement of horizon, 
and increment of power which spring 
from the union of two or three persons in 
a great task, occurs in still greater meas- 
ure where there are ten or one hundred. 
I do not refer merely to the great emo- 
tional tension which the crowd begets. 
That, in itself, may become a mere riot of 
feelincr or intoxication of numbers. But 



TWO OR THREE AND CHRIST 115 

in well-ordered and rationally controlled 
assemblies there is an influence wliich 
works also for intellectual quickening and 
for the refinement of moral insight and 
achievement. 

In the history of invention and of other 
scientific achievements a similar value of 
association is illustrated. The develop- 
ment of the aeroplane is a familiar illus- 
tration. The Wright brothers work not 
only with each other, but they keep in 
touch with the history of the mechanical 
devices akin to any parts of the ones they 
are building, and inform themselves of 
all similar experiments in the world. 
Their results, in turn, are appropriated by 
others also, and at the present time hun- 
dreds of minds are co-operating more or 
less consciously and intentionally in the 
realization of the great end, aerial naviga- 
tion. The union of these minds creates 
an atmosphere in which each individual is 
stimulated, disciplined and guided by an 
intelligence shared in a measure by all, 
but which is greater than any single rmnd. 
It is the same in moral and spiritual con- 



116 THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 

cerns. They are not diminished by shar- 
ing them with others. On the contrary, 
the more they are diffused and shared, the 
more do they grow and flourish, and the 
more intense becomes the encompassing 
medium which they create. 

If the presence of Christ, then, is more 
real to assembled individuals than it is to 
isolated persons, — and this is capable of 
abundant demonstration, — we may still 
inquire what is the nature of that pres- 
ence. Must it be supposed that something 
comes down from above to fulfill the 
promise of Jesus made to his disciples, or 
may we believe that what happens is as 
natural and normal as anything we ex- 
perience? Is the Christ who dwells in 
the midst of our fellowship today iden- 
tical with the Jesus who lived in Nazareth 
centuries ago? Is he literally a being who 
ascended bodily into the heavens? Or is 
he the Holy Spirit who dwells in our 
midst whenever we bring our minds and 
hearts into communion with one another 
and with the purpose and spirit of the 
historical Jesus? Jesus promised his dis- 



TWO OB THREE AND CHRI8T 117 

ciples a Comforter, and that Comforter is 
represented by the apostles as the Holy- 
Spirit. In many passages in the New 
Testament there is also the doctrine of the 
Logos, the Word, which is the inner life 
of the world and the light of men, '*that 
true Light which lighteth every man that 
cometh into the world." 

This biblical doctrine of the inner 
Light is true to the facts of experi- 
ence. We talk of the crowd-spirit 
and of group-consciousness. The Group- 
Spirit is found preeminently in the 
places of religious work and wor- 
ship. That Spirit is as real as the Spirit 
of the market-place, or the Spirit of the 
Political Party, or the Spirit of Science 
itself, all of which spirits every one 
knows to be so real. It is a Spirit which 
is identified with our most vital and 
urgent interests. It is not something pe- 
culiar to a certain age or limited to some 
arbitrary gift of the deity. It is rather 
a direct and natural expression of our 
deepest experiences, of those experiences 
in which we quicken each other and gen- 



118 THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 

erate through our fellowship, a common 
consciousness which is somehovv^ larger 
and wiser and more gracious than any 
one of us, or than all of us when separate 
and alone. 

There is no more of mystery here than 
in our commonest work. When a few of 
us sit together as a committee of our 
school or club or business, there is at 
once a sense of control of all merely indi- 
vidual judgments. We often record what 
we call ''the sense of the meeting.'' We 
almost instinctively put forward our pri- 
vate thoughts with a sense of their mea- 
greness. When they occurred to us be- 
forehand, in solitude, they seemed so 
adequate and clear. But now our words 
meet that over-arching personality before 
whom they must be tested. Or, our 
scared and frightened little self receives 
a great expansion and encouragement by 
the endorsement of the larger social self. 
Then we rejoice and take courage. It is 
here also that we feel ourselves to be in 
most immediate and vital relation with 
the sources of power. We are face to 



TWO OR THREE AND CHRIST 119 

face with the original fountains of wis- 
dom and strength. In religious fellow- 
ship of this kind we are not merely re- 
peating what some one else has discov- 
ered, we are not dependent upon any 
priest or mediator. Ours is then a faith, 
such as George Eliot describes: 

a faitli 
Taught by no priest, but by our beating hearts: 
Faith to each other; the fidelity 
Of men whose pulses leap with kindred fire, 
Who in the flash of eyes, the clasp of hands, 
Nay, in the silent bodily presence, feel 
The mystic stirrings of a common life 
That makes the many one." 

The same reverence for this capacity of 
every individual to share in and to con- 
tribute to the spiritual life is expressed in 
these lines of Walt Whitman: 

"Painters have painted their swarming groups, 

and the center figure of all, 
From the head of the center figure spreading a 

nimbus of gold-colored light; 
But I paint myriads of heads, but paint no head 

without its nimbus of gold-colored light. 
From my hand, from the brain of every man and 

woman it streams, effulgently flowing forever. 
Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, 

that you be my poem. 



120 THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 

I will leave all, and come and make the hymns 

of you. 
None has understood you, but I understand you; 
None has done justice to you — you have not done 

justice to yourself; 

None but has found you imperfect; I only find no 

imperfection in you; 
None but would subordinate you; I only am he 

who will never consent to subordinate you; 
I only am he who places over you no master, or 

owner, or better, or God, beyond what awaits 

intrinsically in yourself." 

''From the brain of every man anc 
woman it streams, effulgently flowing 
forever" — this stream of light flowing 
from the myriads of heads assembled in 
the great cause of human welfare, is the 
spirit of the group. It is the Holy Spirit 
of our divinest and loftiest companion- 
ships. We cannot be too reverent toward 
it. We need constantly its baptism and 
its communion. And above all, we must 
accept its instruction and its guidance. 
To deny or reject this Holy Spirit is the 
greatest of sins. It is the denial of one's 
larger self, the rejection of the living 
oracles of God. 

This comradeship of noble endeavor is 
the upper realm where Christ meets his 



TWO OR THREE AND CHRIST 121 

disciples most intimately. He appears in 
such a fellowship when all outer doors are 
closed. That is the fascination and be- 
witchment of spiritual enterprises. They 
accomplish objective and tangible results, 
but they also bring the sense of divine 
companionship. They make men con- 
scious of being co-workers with God. 

It is in this experience that the most 
convincing evidences of religion live. The 
adventures of faith confirm the hearts of 
those engaged in them,, and they bear ir- 
resistible witness to the world. There is 
always something lacking in theoretical 
proofs. They are at best only partial 
embodiments of the living reality, but the 
concerted action of Christian men, aglow 
Avith the enthusiasm of an unselfish, holy 
cause possesses the full measure of real- 
ity. Whenever they meet to counsel for 
some noble end; whenever they express 
in forms of worship the toil and warfare, 
the tragedy and triumph of man's re- 
demption, there cluster about them a 
mighty cloud of witnesses and within 
their midst rises the majestic and gracious 



122 TEE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 

figure of Christ. In such moments there 
is an increment of life, a new measure of 
comfort and inspiration. 

The great hymns of fellowship and com- 
munion have their power and meaning in 
this fact. They proclaim that spiritual 
comradeship brings strength and succor 
for every need. Even two or three, welded 
together in such fellowship, gain thereby 
that other presence. That is the quicken- 
mg message which rings in the depths of 
Clough's great "Hymn of Fellow-help'': 

When the enemy is near thee. 
In our hands we will upbear thee: 
He shall neither scathe nor scare thee, 
He shall fly thee and shall fear thee. 
Call on us! 

Call when all good friends have left thee. 
Of good sights and sounds bereft thee; 
Call when hope and heart are sinking, 
When the brain is sick with thinking: 
Help, help! 

When the panic comes upon thee, 
Hope and choice have all foregone thee, 
Fate and force are closing o'er thee, 
And but one way stands before thee. 
Call on us! 



TWO OB THREE AND CHRIST 123 

Oh, if thou dost not call. 
Be but faithful, that is all. 
Go right on, and close behind thee 
There shall follow still and find thee 
Help, sure help. 



NOV 20 1911 



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